While it may not have been true 20 years ago, one of the first courses that anyone who thinks about British heathland golf will think of is St. George’s Hill (specifically its Red and Blue nines). And there’s very good reason for this. It was one of the major courses that HS Colt designed in his career, being the centerpiece of one of the country’s first high-end housing developments. And there’s a good argument that of all the major London heathland courses, it sits on the best piece of land, with broad contours that play a major role in the holes’ strategy, especially off the tee. All that plus Tom Doak saying that it was his favorite of heathland courses makes it one of first heathland courses that most architecture aficionados want to visit when playing in England.

And overall, I think that this is justified. The main St. George’s Hill course is a great course. The land is second-to-none among heathland courses and Colt used this brilliantly to create a set of diverse driving challenges. The bunkering is aesthetically and strategically on point and the choice of green sites is excellent. Moreover, the third nine—the Green nine—is not far off in quality. As Doak also mentioned in the yellow Confidential Guide, the third nine isn’t far off the first two in quality. In fact on my first round there, I found myself arguing with the club pro that the third nine was comparable to the first two because of its excellent short par 4s (he and is group—I think some members—had a laugh about that). Maybe it’s not quite on the same level, but it’s very good; certainly worth playing if you visit and way better than the standard relief nine at British clubs.

Despite all the positives, I don’t think that I love this course quite as much as everyone else seems to now. It is undeniably well thought-out and strong. It has several excellent holes. But it also lacks a sense of quirk, a sense of unusualness that my favorite heathland courses—like Sunningdale’s Old Course and Swinley Forest—possess in abundance. And this minor complaint is probably just a personal idiosyncrasy. Most people would point to the lack of quirk as a positive. The course has excellent sightlines and when there are blind shots, there are very receptive areas on the other side. The bunkering is as thoroughly thought-out as on any course that you’re going to find. And the greens, while mostly modest in contour, contain interest and are expertly shaped into their surroundings.

All in all, I understand why this has become a world top 100 course. It’s long on strengths. But, as I’ve said in other reviews, while I can’t really say whether this is a top 100 course—I haven’t seen enough of the contenders—it doesn’t have some of the highs of the other best heathland courses. It’s still likely got a spot in my London heathland top 5 but misses out on the top 3, which are Sunningdale Old, West Sussex, and Swinley Forest.


I played St. George’s Hill twice during my 3 year stay in London; first in the spring of 2016 then again in the spring of 2017. The course underwent some changes during this time, most notably on the first hole. I liked the original version of the first hole (starting with the Red nine), which played across the entry drive to a wide fairway running uphill to a green tucked off to the left in a shallow valley.

As was evident on that wet April day though, the club was having trouble with the drainage at the front of the green and was in the middle of completely reworking it for my second visit in 2017. Already completed was the addition of two fairway bunkers on the left and one right, which made the hole much more difficult off the tee, turning one of the easiest driving holes into one of the hardest. They were in the middle of building a new green, which appeared to be a bit higher and to the right of the previous green. It was clear to me that the new version would be substantially harder than the first version that I played. How difficult would depend on how large and receptive the new green was. I never played to the new green but assuming that it was reasonably large and receptive to a shot played close to the left fairway bunkers, I’d imagine that the new version was an improvement on the old.

The second is a long par 4 playing semi-blind over a hill. Although it wasn’t an issue in soft conditions in April, I’d imagine that in the summer a long driver must be careful to keep their tee ball short of the creek about 320 from the back tees because the fairway runs straight downhill into it. The approach runs gradually back uphill to a very elegant green that’s best approached from the right side of the fairway.

The medium-long par 3 third also underwent some changes between my two visits, with the front left bunkers being combined with heather planted on the high side. The new version felt like an improvement to me at the time but looking back at my pictures, I think that I prefer the simpler look of the original.

Four is a very tricky drivable par 4 par that really plays like a super tough long par 3. That’s because most decent players will be able to reach the green if they’re playing from the correct set of tees. It was only about 245 from the regular tees and stretches to only about 275. The green and fronting bunkers are sort-of V-shaped while the green has a lot of interior contour and falls right to left. Generally it’s best to miss right here although if you’re laying up and the flag is on the right, you’ll want to hit your tee shot near the lone fairway bunker on the left.

The medium length (~390) gentle dogleg left par 4 fifth was one hole that grew on me from my first to second visits. The drive is very important here because while the yardage on the card isn’t that long, the hole (surprisingly) plays almost 50 feet uphill. Because of this, it’s important that your drive hugs the fairway bunkers on the left to shorten the approach. There’s more room out to the right but if you hit there (even if you stay out of the trees), you’ll have a surprisingly long shot. It’s subtle, but excellent design and the fine shaping of the bunkers makes this a top-notch hole.

The long par 4 sixth looks a bit more difficult off the tee because heather obscures much of the fairway, but it’s a much easier driving hole than five. Again almost imperceptibly, this hole is about 40 feet downhill from the tee to the landing area. While it appears that the left side is fraught with trouble, it’s only about a 200 yard carry over the heather and a hidden bunker. Then you have one of the widest fairways on the course. It’s better to be up the left side here because the green is open from here. If you connect with your drive, you should have no more than a mid-iron to a subtle, but interesting green.

Seven is a short par 5 but it’s a tough driving hole, with a bunker narrowing the fairway to almost nothing at about 260 and a trench/trees right of the fairway. It’s best to keep your approach up the left as this also keeps you away from several fairway bunkers on the right and gives you the best angle into the green.

As a Michigan guy, I have a special affection for a drop shot par 3. And the eighth at St. George’s Hill, which plays about 25-30 feet downhill (it seemed like more), is simply the best one that I’ve seen. And that’s even with its formerly cavernous front bunker in a neutered state.

The reason why I think that this hole works so well is that the green slopes pretty good from back to front so you want to be in the front. But if you miss short, especially if you miss short-right, your ball can roll several yards back off the front. Fortunately there’s a lot of room in the back left and there isn’t any trouble here…that just leaves you a very nerve-wracking putt if the pin is in the front. It’d love to see a restoration of the front bunker because this hole was originally about that awesome feature, but I think that it’s still a very interesting hole from a playing perspective without it.

The 390 yard par 4 ninth also underwent some changes between my two playings, namely the expansion of the fairway bunkers up the left. What had looked like a very forgiving drive became much more intimidating—although it doesn’t appear that the effective width of the fairway changed much short of the second bunker. I didn’t realize it until looking at my two sets of pictures, but they actually removed one fairway bunker up the left. I think that they brought the second bunker further into the fairway so it is narrower if you try to go back 270 from the back tees. Otherwise the hole isn’t much different, it just looks harder. I suppose that that’s a good thing to aim for in a redesign. The uphill approach, with the big, heathery mound at the front-left, was unchanged.

The long par 4 tenth, or the first hole on the Blue nine, is probably the most famous hole at St. George’s Hill. The drive is semi-blind over a ridge. Because the hole jogs gently to the left, you’d think that you’d want to play up the left for the best angle. This is incorrect. The best angle in here is actually from the right, closest to the pine trees because if you can hit a good drive down the right, you have a chance to actually see the green. If you’re up the left, the famous hill with bunker completely blocks your view.

You also want to be up the right because the green is shallow and two-tiered, with the high tier left and the low tier right. If you drive up the right, you’ll also be playing into the general slope which is probably helpful if it’s summer and the ground is running hot (not so important in April). I don’t know if I’m quite as enamored with this hole as others seem to be, but there’s no doubt that it’s an excellent hole.

The eleventh is about a 120 yard flick with a wedge to a small green protected by bunkers front left and right with steep drop-offs long and right. Make sure that your wedge flick is accurate and the right distance.

Twelve is an interesting 350 yard par 4. This is where it started to become apparent to me how important a role the fairway contours played in many of the holes. While the drive is mostly blind, the fairway is wide and the hole is straightaway. So you’d think that things are simpler than they appear.

​Well yes…but then no. No because unless you place your drive in a part of the fairway that gives you a favorable like, you may have an extremely awkward uphill approach to the green. The best placement is ~240 up the right side, which places your ball on the upslope and gives you an open angle to the green. Go beyond this and you’ll either have a downhill like or a super awkward blind, uphill 60 yard shot. The left side of the fairway is flatter, but then you’re playing into a shallower aspect of the green. This hole doesn’t look that interesting in plan, but the contours in the fairway make it very interesting.

The brilliance of how Colt routed these holes over the property’s contours was more apparent on the long, dogleg left par 4 thirteenth. Here we have a staggered fairway bunker pattern, with the right fairway bunker being about 190 to reach from the back tee and the left being about a 215 yard carry. That’s not so difficult, right?

Well, the bunkers are actually a bit of a red herring here because the primary driving hazard is the big ridge beyond these that runs diagonally from short-left (off the left bunker) to long-right. If you hit a straight ball that carries the left bunker, you’ll be find; your ball will bound forward and you’ll have a simple approach uphill to the green.

But if you push your drive a little, the slope in the fairway will carry your ball away toward the trees on the right. Admittedly this feature doesn’t work so well when the ground is soft. Playing in April, I hit my drive right into the middle of the ridge and it stayed there. But I’ve played enough in summer British conditions to know that that same drive in the summer—barring an odd straight kick—would have resulted in a search for my ball in the right trees.

After that, the approach is classic Colt, with crossing fairway bunkers about 40 yards short of the green. These will be less of an issue for shorter hitters who have play their drives up the left side of the fairway.

Number fourteen is a ~200 par 3 and it’s a nice hole, but nothing too special. Except for number eight, the par 3s at St. George’s Hill didn’t excite me too much, which differentiates it (negatively) from some of his other heathland courses.

The long par 5 fifteenth is a forgiving driving hole with a bunker 230-250 up the right that should be easy to avoid. But it narrows on the layup, with staggered bunkers, first left then right. The one on the right is about 120 yards short of the center of the green but there’s plenty of room to play left of this and this hole shouldn’t give you too much trouble.

I thought that the final three holes were brilliant although I didn’t realize that the eighteenth was great until my second visit. The brilliance of the long par 4 sixteenth is apparent; the fairway slopes right-to-left with bunkers (and unfortunate trees) up the left. Short of the green, we can see Colt’s diagonal carry bunkers short of the green running from short-left to long-right, like on thirteen. Put these things together and what do you got? Hit a draw off the slope on the right to feed your ball into the left side of the fairway, which gives you a better angle for the approach. Hang it out to the right and you have a longer shot, with a worse angle, from a side hill lie. The green is also shallow and slopes from right to left, placing a premium on drive length as well as placement.

As brilliant a role that fairway contours have played in the holes on the Blue nine so far, I think that the long par 4 seventeenth is the best of the bunch. The fairway here runs uphill and slopes from right-to-left. There’s a high tier on the right side of the fairway that leaves you about 165 to the middle of the green. If you drive it up the right side but aren’t long enough, you have a blind approach. If you pull your drive a bit, it’ll feed into the low left side of the fairway and you’ll have a blind approach with a bad angle over heather. So more than any hole so far, this one places a premium on good driving. If you’re especially long, you can carry the fairway tier and bound 40 yards toward the green although this requires a drive of ~300 yards from the new back tee.

The green is also a beauty, sitting simply on the land with an odd run-off to the left.

On first playing, I didn’t think too much of the 390 yard finishing hole but now I realize that it’s another case of Colt routing the hole so that the contours create an interesting driving challenge. The trouble here, in the form of pine trees and a bunker, is up the right side. The green is also up on a hill to the right with heather-filled pits at its front-left. Therefore you want to drive up the right side to leave the best view and the best angle.

But unless you hit a very accurate drive or put a slight fade on the ball, it will likely run off to the left because the fairway slopes hard right-to-left. Provided that you don’t go too far, the approach is playable from over here but the shot is longer and the angle is much worse. The hole is short enough that it shouldn’t be an issue for longer hitters. But it will matter for the shorter hitting ones.

So after harboring some reservations about St. George’s Hill in the introduction, that was a pretty positive review. That just goes to show that when we’re talking about the company in which we must place St. George’s Hill, we’re splitting hairs. Colt took a great piece of land and managed to draw things out of it that most architects would not have. I felt that almost every hole on the back nine was perfectly placed so that the contour of the land maximized driving interest with minimal use of bunkers. There are a lot of bunkers here but it often doesn’t seem like they’re the main features on a hole. That’s because they’re not—the slopes in the fairways and the test that they pose from the tee are the main features of most of the holes here.

I guess my only criticism of St. George’s Hill is that it’s almost too perfect—I felt that there was a lack of grit in the course. Now most would probably see that as a positive. While there are blind shots, they’re kept to a minimum and the landing areas on the other side are generous. The sight lines to the bunkers and greens are very good. As I’ve discussed, it’s a very strategic golf course. It also doesn’t have some of the modern shaping (i.e. mounds) around the greens that turned me off a bit at Sunningdale—New and Swinley Forest. Really it’s hard for me to come up with a strong argument why this isn’t a strong world top 100 candidate.

But I don’t have to make that judgment so I don’t really care. It would have been nice to have the occasional highly contoured, blind green, some odd mound in the middle of the fairway a la Walton Heath, or awkward, straight uphill drives that opened into splendor on the other side like the seventh on Sunningdale—Old. On many of the best British courses, inland and links, it was some of the odd quirks that I relished the most.

Still if that’s all I’ve got for criticism of this course, it must be pretty good. And it is. It’d certainly be in the small handful of heathland courses that I’d recommend to an architecture aficionado as a must see if planning a golf trip in England.

Rye was a bit of an unusual cultural experience for this generic suburban American. The club is relatively private as far as British courses go and you have to make advanced arrangements to play here. But the club secretary was very warm and welcoming and despite some issues arranging a date due to strikes in Spring 2016 on the Southern Railway, I was able to play on a lovely, early May day.

Knowing about its relative privacy and the fact that Rye is the home of the prestigious President’s Putter competition in January between the golfers of Oxford and Cambridge Universities, I knew that this was a fairly aristocratic place. And I’m pretty sure that I was right about that. But it didn’t mean what I thought it meant. When Americans hear the term ‘aristocratic,’ they think that the place will be posh, opulent. No one would describe Rye with those terms. While almost all British clubhouses are small, this was was particularly modest in its furnishings—although still quite comfortable, especially the bar and lounge with its wonderful assortment of golf books.

And the customs seemed to be an odd fit given the surroundings. A jacket is required in the clubhouse until after 4 PM—again, jacket-required is something that I associate with posh, decidedly not-relaxed restaurants and the Rye clubhouse didn’t feel like any jacket-required restaurants that I’ve been to. I had heard that there’s a certain relaxed modesty associated with aristocracy in the UK but it’s different to hear about something and experience. Without getting into the details, I also had an interaction where the answer to a question of mine was ‘no’ but as I’ve experienced interacting with similar types since, ‘no’ is not part of the Oxbridge vocabulary, substituted with any of a variety of more complicated euphemisms.

There’s another aspect of the club’s culture which was foreign to me but which I wholeheartedly endorse (not that I minded any of the above): here you play as at most a two-ball and you play in 3 hr. 15 min. or less. Any more than two balls requires special permission with which I imagine they aren’t too liberal.

So how about the course? Along with Royal St. George’s, this was the course that I was most interested in seeing. And it didn’t disappoint—this is a great golf course with several holes that must belong on a list of best links holes. The par 3s are justifiably famous—and also earn their notorious reputation that “the hardest shots are Rye are the second shots on the par 3s” (it sounds like a joke—it isn’t).

But Tom Doak certainly wasn’t kidding when he called this one of the toughest courses that he had seen relative to par. Like many of the best English courses, Rye is less-than par 70 (par 68)—but this just means that all of the long holes are par 4s, even if a few of them are almost long enough to be par 5s. In fact the one par 5—the first hole—is only about 485 and now could just be called a par 4. Given that several of the holes on the front nine play along narrow dune ridges and that there often isn’t a lot of room to play, I’m hard-pressed to think of a course that’s harder. I played this course in early May when the ground was only just starting to firm up and the wind at worst got up to about 10-15 mph. It was plenty hard enough under those ideal conditions. I couldn’t imagine playing it with burnt-out summer fairways or in a cold January wind with the Oxbridge crowd.


So long as they continue to call it a par 5, the first hole is probably the easiest at Rye. It’s not friendly to slicers with the dune ridge up the right side but there’s no real trouble between the tee and the green. I thought that the green had a lot of wonderful little contours and was slightly convex, with tricky (but not hard) little shots all around.

While we get none of the Rye difficulty on the first hole, we get plenty of it on the ~180 yard second. The green is protected by several bunkers on both sides and there’s a diagonal ridge short of the green that can deflect run-ups. You pretty much have to hit and hold the green here which will be tough to do if the ground is firm because like most of the greens here, it’s small. A cut into the right-to-left wind is the play (or just a layup).

Three is another flat hole similar to one except about 40 yards shorter and a par 4. There’s a bunker in the right-center of the fairway about 300 from the back tees. The green is elevated, but there’s plenty of room to run the ball on.

The ~410 fourth is one of the most famous holes at Rye. It’s a favorite of Tom Doak because of its unusual routing along the dune ridge that separates the first three holes from holes 6-8. I appreciate the novelty but my God…this is a hard hole. I was playing the back tees but moved up to ~375 on this one because even with a ~10 mph. wind from the left, I didn’t feel there was any way that I could hit the fairway. The convex fairway runs off into junk on both sides and if you get one riding the wind, you could end up 20 or so feet back down the dune ridge to the right near the third fairway.

While the drive is a bit much for me, the second shot is a beauty. We play past an old WWII gun turret on the left to a green that rests perfectly on the land, falling gently to the front-left. And this is where you want to hedge your miss because a miss right goes 20 ft. down the hill onto the second hole.

In short, this hole has some real merits but was a bit too severe to be one of my favorites. Maybe I’d get more comfortable with it if I played it again.

The fifth is the second of Rye’s famous par 3s and it’s a great one. We shoot over broken ground to a fairly large plateau green. Well, the plateau is large in the front…not so much in the back. The deeper you go, the narrower it becomes and because we’re still on the same dune ridge from the previous hole, a miss wide will send you off onto another hole and make you realize that the famous phrase about Rye isn’t a joke.

Another unexpected aspect of Rye is how much of a shooting gallery it is at times. Especially on the front nine, the holes are very close together (I’d be surprised if the whole front nine takes up 50 acres) and you’re often shooting very close to golfers on other holes. That’s especially the case on the blind, dogleg left, long par 4 sixth, where you thread your drive between golfers teeing off on the fifth to the left and on the ninth to the right.

​This hole is a really strong competitor with the fourth in terms of difficulty. If you miss the aiming pole right, you have an extremely long second and may have a difficult time figuring out where to even search for your ball… But like the fourth, the approach into the green and the green itself are beautiful although in this case quite narrow with double bunkers on both sides of the approach.

The other most famous hole at Rye is the par 3 seventh and while most misses are quite severe, I liked it. It reminded me a lot of the notorious second hole at the Kingsley club with its severe hazards around the front of the green. But I liked this hole a bit more because while short and right are dead, a miss left isn’t so bad and a miss deep isn’t bad at all. The green is large enough for the 160 yard shot and has excellent interior contours.

We walk down to the edge of the dunes to tee off on the long par 4 eighth, which plays out to flatter land more reminiscent of the relief course next door. While the hole doglegs right, you want to be on the left side of the fairway because there are awkward mounds in the corner of the dogleg and a shot from the right side leaves a shot over bushes to a shallower aspect of the green. The green is wide-open from the left.

Nine is an excellent short par 4 which at 300 from the tips will be drivable for many. The main task here is to avoid the bunkers left of the fairway between about 230 and 260. But this shouldn’t be too difficult with the standard left-to-right wind. In fact, the wind made this hole feel quite easy as it seems to blow your ball right at the green. Although I’m not a long hitter, I was able to get my drive just in front of the green…and then screw up the rest.

Ten is a ~440 yard dogleg right and while there are big dunes next to the tee, it plays over tame ground. The hole isn’t very interesting from tee to green (unless you pump one right into the gorse) but I really liked the green; lay-of-the-land but with a very pleasing slight convexity that requires precision iron play and makes for tricky chips. And there is some strategy because like the eighth, the green is more open from the outside of the fairway and being in the right rough leaves a semi-blind shot over the gorse to a shallower aspect of the green.

The short par 4 eleventh is aesthetically jarring with a pond (complete with two fountains) up the right side of the fairway and a warehouse in the background. It reminded me of playing golf in an industrial landscape in south Detroit (the kind of place that people write songs about escaping from).

But incongruent aesthetics aside, it’s a good hole. A longer can get close to the green (~300 yards out) if they challenge the water. If you bail out too far left, you can run through the fairway into gorse. The green is large and not particularly interesting but while it maybe doesn’t fit with the rest of this course, it’s an excellent driving hole.

Twelve is another long par 4 playing across tame ground but this time there are seven bunkers to augment the challenge. Fortunately the front of the green is open and it’s easy to run one on here.

Thirteen, another long par 4, begins a closing stretch that is one of the most difficult, but also one of the best that I’ve seen. While it seems that the front nine and holes like 4, 5, and 7 get most of the attention, I actually thought that the closing six holes were the strongest part of the course. Thirteen in particular is a standout—one of the best holes with a completely blind shot that I’ve seen.

We drive over the corner of the twelfth green. It’s a diagonal drive from short-right to long-left over low dunes and long grass. While there’s plenty of room right, you want to be up the left side to shorten the approach…which is really important because no matter what you do, it’s completely blind. There’s also an odd rise (I think a buried pipe) that crosses the fairway at a short-left to long-right diagonal and while it’s only about a 195 yard carry up the left side, it’s 230 if you go right.

The approach is my favorite blind shot that I’ve encountered in the game. Notice that the dune ridge runs from short-right to long-left. It’s reasonable to assume that this is going to run up the left side of the green and because of this, you don’t want to miss left. Not only is that correct, but short and right of the green is flat and a miss over here leaves a simple pitch. It also shortens the carry; if you go at the green, you must carry it all the way there but if you bail a little right, you can be 50 yards short of the green and still clear the dune ridge. If you miss wide right pin high though, there’s long grass and bushes.

To me, the approach here is the perfect blind shot—there’s a lot of trouble if you’re aggressive and don’t execute but there’s a reasonable option to take risk off the table. This is one of the best holes in southeast England.

As difficult as the par 3s have been so far, the ~210 yard fourteenth might be the most difficult. The green is about the size of one that you might find on a pitch-and-putt course. It’s also built up above one of Rye’s infamous wooden board walls on the right and has three bunkers left. The only sensible play here is to try and just carry the bunker about 25 yards short of the green but even if you pull the shot off, the odds of hitting this green are low.

Fifteen, another 450+ yard par 4, is just one of the purest holes that you’ll see. There are no fairway bunkers and the fairway is pretty wide, but it has some of the most interesting small scale contours that you’ll ever see. The green sits on the land as simply as a green could. There’s nothing complicated about this hole, no real strategy. Yet it’s still about as satisfying a hole as I could want.

There appears to be quite a bit more design in the sixteenth hole, with is blessed with the same excellent terrain as fifteen. The bunker on the left is about a 240 yard carry from the back tees although it’s best if you skirt the right edge rather than carry it. The green is small, very undulating, and something of an L-shape. I know that Colt played a major role in the design of this course and while it’s a little more undulating than usual for him, I suspect that this green is his because the mounding around the green is very reminiscent of what you see on some of his other courses.

No one seems to consider the almost 250 yard par 3 seventeenth among the course’s great par 3s but I thought that it was an excellent hole that nicely complemented the other four. While the other four had small greens with severe drop-offs around the edges, this one is wide open in front and fairly flat around the edges, save for two bunkers at the front-left.

But I thought that there was a subtle brilliance to this hole. There’s something of a diagonal ridge from short-left to long-right in front of the green. If you pull your tee shot, this will likely deflect it into one of the green side bunkers. But if you play your shot at the right side of the green, it will feed the ball into the middle of the green. It’s almost the complete opposite of the other par 3s which are all very target-oriented…but all the better for it.

Eighteen, yet another ~440 yard par 4, is a worthy inclusion on many ‘best finishing holes in England’ lists. There’s lots of trouble to the right of the fairway in long grass-covered dunes. The approach, past the back of the clubhouse (don’t hit a hook…) plays over beautiful, rumpled ground that gradually descends to the simple, lay-of-the-land green in a manner very similar to the fifteenth hole.

Rye was comfortably in my southern England top 5 with Sunningdale Old, Royal St. George’s, West Sussex, and Swinley Forest. But it has a very different feel from all of those courses. Those are all big, majestic courses with towering pines, open expanses of heather, and in the case of Royal St. George’s, massive sand dunes. Rye feels like it occupies the space of about six holes at Royal St. George’s, with many drives playing over the edge of other greens or tees. While not every green is small, most are and they have some of the steepest drop-offs of any course that I’ve seen. Like the clubhouse, it’s not what you expect an feels a bit eccentric at times.

But I love an English eccentric. And as we saw with the last few holes, it isn’t all like that. There’s tremendous variety here and while the front nine is downright severe at times, the back nine opens up a bit and gives you an opportunity to play some different kinds of shots (especially if you’re missing greens). The closing stretch is about as pure of links golf as you could want. In fact, I probably like the back nine almost as much as the more famous front nine. And it’d be a lot easier to play in difficult conditions.



Rye also has a relief nine, the Jubilee Course, that consists of about 12 holes with a standard 9-hole loop but then a few fairways and greens in the center where to play to from. Unless we consider the third nine at St. George’s Hill to be a relief nine, this is easily the strongest of the relief courses that I played in the UK (I preferred it to the less consistent Channel Course at Burnham and Berrow). Interestingly this course is only a few decades old because when the main course was built, this land was marsh. In contrast to many other places around the UK, the sea has been receding in this area and has left an area of land almost as big as the main course.

Although the fairways are much flatter and the course lacks the nuance of its older brother, there’s a lot of good design work out here and some interesting holes. The shaping of the second green and its bunkering reminded me of the last few holes on the big course. The fourth is a beauty, curving around the dunes that separate it from the front nine on the big course and playing to a green nestled into the dunes. This green would be a welcome addition on the big course.

Other highlights include the par 5 sixth with its approach winding up through the dunes to the ridge top green and the following hole, a drop shot par 3 that plays to a green near the seashore with two bunkers right. This hole would also be at home among the prestigious par 3s next door.

Royal Cinque Ports (a.k.a. Deal, which is the name of the town) sits a mile or so down the road from its more famous neighbor Royal St. George’s. Like its neighbor, it’s a former host of the Open Championship also hasn’t hosted it since 1920 as subsequently scheduled Opens in 1938 and 1949 were moved due to high tides. It’s not hard to understand how this could have been an issue when playing the course because it’s very low-lying land—although it shouldn’t be an issue now because in the subsequent years, a large seawall was constructed between the beach and the course, protecting the course and creating a nice place for people to walk their dogs.

Because the course is well-protected from flooding now, I’m surprised that there hasn’t been another Open here. The course seems very well suited for it; it’s long (almost 7,400 yards!) and very difficult, especially the inward nine, which plays into the wind and has almost all of the longest par 4s. This would be one of those places where a guy could finish three hours before the leaders and win the tournament as they got torn up by the back nine. Also, it shares the virtues with Royal St. George’s that it’s within travel distance of London and there’s plenty of room here for tournament infrastructure. The course itself is on a fairly narrow strip of links land, but it’s plenty large enough for gallery and there’s a lot of open space around the course for parking, corporate pavilions, etc.

I’ve been a bit reluctant to write about Royal Cinque Ports because my photographic record is much less complete than I’d like and my memory of the details of some of the holes on the back nine is lacking. It’s been 5 years now since I’ve played there and while many features, like the greens on 3, 12, and 16 are still burned into my mind, I don’t remember the details of other holes (like 15 and 17) so well. But I think there’s enough that I can still discuss to make it worthwhile. And to fill in the missing pieces, you can view the excellent flyovers (with commentary) on the club's website. 


I didn’t get any pictures of the first hole but I remember this one well because it reminded me so much of the first hole at St. Andrew’s: a medium-short par 4 where the second is to a green flush over a burn. I don’t know about the first hole at St. Andrew’s because I haven’t played it, but this one—like many greens at Royal Cinque Ports—also had excellent contours.

The medium-long par 4 second (~400 from the second tees which are still 7,000 yards!) isn’t too hard, with scattered fairway bunkers left and right and a fairly open green. This was another outstanding green.

The par 5 third is not only one of the highlights at Royal Cinque Ports, it’s one of the best par 5s that I played in the UK. The drive isn’t too difficult; you just need to avoid a bunker about 280 (from the regular tees) on the right side.

This is where it becomes interesting. The approach is mostly blind over two bunkers and while fairly open, the last 130 yards into the green cover some of the most wild, rolling ground that I’ve ever seen on a golf course. Strategic interest or not, it was just a thrill to walk over this ground, let alone send a ball tumbling over it. But the deep, sunken green is also excellent, with many interesting small scale contours.

I found the short par 3 fourth to be fairly dull although you really don’t want to miss long. The three par 3s were a real weakness of Royal Cinque Ports. The long par 5 fifth is pleasant, but fairly tame compared to the third.

The short par 4 sixth is the subject of some contention. Many think that this rolling dogleg right with its green at the base of the seawall is a great short par 4. I don’t agree. It’s a good short par 4 but it seems nuts to me to try to get your ball near the green as it’s elevated and the drop-offs are so severe that you’re in real trouble if you have anything less than an ideal yardage into it. But I don’t know; it seems that long hitters always get suckered into trying to drive a short par 4 even if you can’t really hit the green and a miss leaves you much worse off than if you laid up. So maybe in practice it works well because people do stupid things.

Seven is only about 415 from the back tees but is quite tough, with bunkers running to 225 on the left and 255 on the right. I thought that the approach was excellent, with the bunkers front left and right of the green close enough to make you think but leaving enough room to roll the ball over the interesting contours onto another excellent green.

Playing to the base of the seawall, the par 3 eighth is tough, with a horseshoe of bunkers around the front of the green. The back of the green is wider and it’s safer to play here, especially considering that the standard wind is coming from the right.

While the routing of holes 2-7 was out from the clubhouse, 8-11 are routed in a W-shape up to and back from the seawall. There’s a bunker left of the fairway on the gently left doglegging long par 4 ninth but carrying it shouldn’t be an issue if you’re playing the right tees.

The short par 4 tenth also doglegs gently left and plays to a very wide fairway and a large green. Although I didn’t get a picture of it, the green was very interesting, with 3 (or maybe even 4) gently tiers facing the right side of the fairway. The best angle in here is from the outside of the dogleg.

Eleven is another fairly short par 4 where you tee off from the seawall, which I thought was pretty nice. Otherwise it reminded me a lot of the ninth hole, just with better visibility from the tee.

The tee of the long par 4 twelfth is the most distant point from the clubhouse and if you care about your score, it’s pretty much nonstop pain and suffering from here. There are staggered fairway bunkers at 265 left and 300 right from the regular back tees, making this a tough driving hole. I thought I had gotten a picture of the green but I guess not. Nevertheless I remember it well because it was a real original, deep but narrow, set in something of a half-pipe with mounded ridges along its left and right side.

Thirteen is another long par 4 with red herring fairway bunkers on the right. I say that because while they’re not an issue to carry, you don’t actually want to do this anyway—the best angle into another excellent, undulating green is from the left and if you carry the bunkers, you’ll be in the right rough.

While it creates a walkback issue because the fifteenth tee is right behind the thirteenth green (this happens a surprising amount of the time on links courses I found), the 220 yard par 3 fourteenth is easily the best of Deal’s three par 3s. The green has a gently false front, three bunkers right, and a Pinehurst-esque run-off to the left. It’s a very difficult green to hit and you maybe shouldn’t even try; a pitch from the front of the green is fairly easy—and I can personally assure that one from the left side is not.

The long par 4 fifteenth reminded me a lot of the thirteenth because it had the same red herring bunker scheme on the right side of the fairway, although these were a bit harder to carry. The approach is a beauty; over rolling links land to an open green on the far side of a ridge. This is a great green for a running approach although from what I remember, everything runs away so you’d have to be careful if the ground is firm—which it certainly wasn’t during my February visit.

I was just short and left of the green with my approach and the shot I played—a bump-and-run pitching wedge with my third—made me smile because it was a shot that don’t get an opportunity to play, requiring true links turf.

Sixteen, now a par 5, is the other standard choice for Deal’s best hole. It’s hard for me to pick between three and sixteen; I’ll just say that they’re two of the 4 or 5 best par 5s in southeast England.

This hole has changed a bit since my visit, with a second layup fairway left of and over the bunker in the first picture below. While it’s obviously hard to judge because I didn’t see it in person, I suspect that this addition (which I believe is a restoration) is a good one because one of the difficulties in approaching this green from the standard layup area is that you’re well below the surface of the green and there’s basically a big wall and bunker in front of it. Apparently the new left fairway is higher, giving better visibility into the green.

The green itself is extraordinary—a perfect 10/10. Up with the thirteenth next door at Royal St. George’s in the small handful at the top of the list of the best greens that I’ve ever seen. If I had to pick one green as the best that I’ve seen, it might be this one.

Seventeen is a bit shorter than the previous run of holes at ~400 yards but again, the fairway is heavily undulating and the approach, over two very deep bunkers 50 yards short of the green, is disconcerting. This is another beautiful, rolling approach where if you want to run the ball on, you’ll have to use the slope on the left or risk losing your shot to the right.

The long par 4 eighteenth is much flatter, with its second shot across a burn to a pushed up green. A difficult, but not particularly distinctive hole, suffering a bit in comparison to the great terrain and run of excellent holes to this point. I remember having a bit of a wait on my approach as the guy’s dog ran around on the green up ahead. But while I’m no dog person, it seemed more appropriate here than it would back in the US.

Of all the courses that I played in the UK, Deal is one that I’d need to play again to get a good read on. I thought that it was an excellent course; certainly among the top 10 that I played across southern England but probably just outside the top 5 in the southeast (behind Sunningdale Old, Royal St. George’s, West Sussex, Swinley Forest, and Rye). But I also think I’d have it ahead of some other heavy hitters, like St. George’s Hill, Sunningdale New, and the Walton Heaths. It’s up with Royal St. George’s and Woking as having the best set of greens that I played over there and there are several outstanding holes. And it’s on some of the best links land that you could want.

The drawbacks for me were the par 3s, a few less interesting par 4s around the turn, and the routing/mix of holes. Like St. Andrew’s, Deal is a primarily out-and-back routing. While purists may appreciate this as being the original way to route a golf course (and sensible because most links land is just a narrow strip along the coast), it creates some difficulties, namely that you’re going to play several holes in a row with the same wind. This is especially an issue at Deal because the prevailing wind is down on the front nine and into on the back nine—and wind aside, the most difficult holes are on the back nine.

The variance in difficulty was driven home to me by my score—a cool 36 going out and a crashing-and-burning 46 coming in. Now my score doesn’t bother me nor do I think it affects my judgment of the course. I shot a terrible score at some of the courses that I rate most highly, like Sunningdale Old and Rye. But in this case, I think my score reflects a lack of balance in the course that I do think is a bit of a problem. And really, there isn’t anything wrong with the holes per se; if they dug up the clubhouse and moved it two holes to the left so that the sixteenth were the eighteenth and you didn’t play all the most difficult holes in a row, I think that’d solve the problem.

But as is now, the lack of balance throughout the course of hard and easy holes is a bit of an issue. That, of course, would make the course exciting as an Open venue as we’d get to see players try to hold on to win the tournament. So add me to the long list of people who love to see this course as an Open venue. The rest of us should definitely go and see it because it’s a true links course with many great greens and great holes. Just don’t call your friends and brag about your score after finishing the front nine.

After a year’s postponement, the best golfers in the world will descend on Royal St. George’s Golf Club in the southeastern corner of England this July. On a cold, windy day in the middle of February 2016, I was pretty much the only one there.

I was sitting in the back of the classroom at the London School of Economics a few weeks earlier, my mind wandering as usual to topics other than the lecture I was attending. I had been in the country for a few months but hadn’t yet played golf. Being the golf course architecture nerd that I am and being in a country with so much great—and accessible—architecture, it was about time that I started to visit some of these places about which I’d heard and seen so many pictures.

The course which I most wanted to see was Royal St. George’s. I’d heard about its blind shots and extreme hazards. I liked that fact that it was the least favorite Open venue of many of the pros. And I knew that it was near Prince’s and Royal Cinque Ports, which would create a nice 3-day vacation, just an hour-and-a-half train ride from London. So I wrote an email to the club secretary asking to play. I came to learn that for most UK clubs, this isn’t necessary; almost all private clubs are what we in the US would call ‘semi-private,’ meaning that the public can play them, subject to restrictions on date and time. Because I wanted to come in mid-February, it wasn’t too difficult to book a day’s golf either here or at its neighbors, so my plans came together very quickly.

Royal St. George’s was several firsts for me. My first time playing in England. My first time playing a true links course. My first time playing in 40-degree (and not celsius) temperatures. But it couldn’t have been more perfect. I had the bright idea to wear my thermal running tights under my clothes. These kept me warm running in 25 degree temperatures in New York. They worked perfectly. In my second round, I encountered an older man walking his dog on the course and he told me that it was too cold to play (which is a strong statement for an Englishman—they’re pretty tough about golf), but I proudly showed him my running tights and said that I was perfectly warm and having a blast. I hadn’t liked playing in cold weather before discovering golf in running tights but ever since I’ve loved it.

But I also discovered what I had come for, which was a course that I would later describe to people as a ‘moving’ experience. It starts with probably the best site for a golf course that I’ve ever seen—several hundred acres of sand dunes, with the ground itself ranging from the largest dunes to a flat plain with some of the finest small contours that you’ll ever see. To be honest, it’d be pretty hard to build a not-great course on this site. But Royal St. George’s takes advantage of the site with many holes that fit their specific sites perfectly, with some appropriately unusual results. My understanding is that the course had a lot more blindness in the past and it definitely wasn’t as quirky as it could have been. But you’ll see that in addition to the big, dramatic holes, the holes on the more subtle terrain take as good of advantage of this as anything you could want.

This was also when I decided that I was going to start photographing the courses that I played. Unfortunately I hadn’t figured out my method of what I wanted to photograph yet so the ratio of general scenery to specific shots and features is way too high. My method has become to photograph every main shot on a hole and then any additional interesting features. I got many of these, but not as many as I’d like and while my memory of most of the holes is pretty good, I wouldn’t be able to provide photographic evidence for everything that I’d like to discuss. So I’ll focus here on what I have pictures to discuss. You can go to the course’s excellent hole-by-hole section of its website for the rest.


I don’t have pictures from the straightaway, mid-length par 4 first hole but the front of the green is well-defended by bunkers and you need to have hit a good drive to hit and hold it. Although it’s a bit of a walk back to the tees, the second is an outstanding mid-length par 4. The hole doglegs left and there’s a small dune ridge and two bunkers up the left side. The bunkers are only about a 200 yard carry from the daily tees (to which they limit visitors) but the further left that you go, the longer the carry over the dunes. It’s a great driving hole. While the angle to the green isn’t so important, it’s elevated and on the small side, so it’s important that you got a good drive off.

The long par 3 third is a newer hole, which they built in the late 70s in an effort to get the Open Championship back. It replaced the famous blind Sahara hole. I’m certain that I would have preferred the old version. To me, there are only two negative things about Royal St. George’s: the third green and the eighth green. Both were (and look like they were) constructed in the late 70s, two-tiered and framed by mounding. I’m not sure that the mounding around the greens is the result of shaping but the two green sites looked unnatural to me because the flat tiers of their surfaces resembled nothing in their surroundings. If these two greens were reworked to blend in better with their surroundings, I’d probably consider Royal St. George’s a perfect 10.

One hole that blends in perfectly with its surroundings and which I’d consider a perfect 10 is the famous long par 4 fourth hole. It starts with a blind drive over the famous bunker, although the version that I saw wasn’t as fearsome as the older picture—the wooden bulkheads had been replaced by grass edging.

But bunker aside, this is both among the most strategic holes and those taking best advantage of its natural contours. You want to drive it over or just left of the highest dune, which requires a carry about about 230 to reach the fairway on the other side. There’s room left but the further left you go, the more that the ground slopes away toward a depression and a bunker.

You’ll also want to be up the right side for the sake of the angle into the green. The further right you are, the flatter the approach into the green. If you’re in the left side of the fairway, you have to play across dunes that will direct your ball away from the green if you hit them. The green itself is the wildest on the property, with a huge false front and just a small area up top on which to put the pin. Many would decry this as ‘unfair’ for such a difficult hole but hey, this is links golf and unfairness and quirk are part of it. It would be an inappropriate course for this incredible site that didn’t have such a wild hole.

Five is another memorable hole but for something for which I unfortunately didn’t get a picture: its blind second shot. The drive is out to an open plain but there are several bunkers up the left. From the fairway, the hole turns left and plays directly over the massive dunes. It’s a good blind shot because the rest of the hole on the other side is fairly simple—flat and without bunkers. I’m a fan of blind shots generally but it’s important that you don’t pile up difficulties on top of the blindness. There’s not much that I hate in golf more than a blind water hazard directly in the line of play.

I thought that the par 3s were a weak spot of Royal St. George’s (and also of its neighbor Royal Cinque Ports), but the sixth is a good one. The green is nicely framed by the dunes from the fifth hole approach and is largely surrounded by four bunkers. The safe play here is to the front-left but at ~160 yards, it shouldn’t be too hard unless the wind is blowing.

The blind drive on the par 5 seventh also adheres nicely to the principle that a blind shot should be to a receptive area. That was the case on this dogleg left although looking at it on Google Earth, it looks like there are some fairway bunkers on the right that I don’t believe were there when I played. We can see that there are several bunkers on the flat approach, but there’s enough space between them to feel comfortable.

This hole was the site of one of my more memorable links golf moments. In my second round, after two or three shots, I had about 140 to the green into a cold, stiff wind. I took a five-iron—about 3 or 4 clubs more than I usually would for this distance—hit it a little fat, saw the ball ascended toward the heavens, and come down about 50 yards short of the green. Fortunately there was no one there with which to share one of my more embarrassing golf moments.

With three, eight is the other hole that bothered me a bit. After a bit of a walkback to the tee, you play to a fairway that narrows sharply at bunkers about 240 out then runs downhill and ends at broken ground at about 290. You play across the broken ground to a green which is in another bumpy dunes setting but is itself blandly two-tiered. It’s a good (and tough) hole from a playing standpoint because the green narrows the deeper you go and there’s a simple bailout short for those who don’t take on the pin. But for a course that’s on this good of land and is this excellent, such misfitting details stand out and are disappointing.

As was the fourth to the third, the ninth is a very not-disappointing follow-up to the eighth. It is a bit of an awkward hole though; you drive into something of a half-pipe fairway with a bunker right at ~220 and two that interrupt the fairway at ~280. The awkwardness here is that it’s hard to get a good angle into the green. This would be from the right side of the fairway, but the slope makes it impossible to keep the ball here.

Although the right side of the hole plays into the deepest aspect of the green, the bigger problem with coming in from the left is that there’s a high ridge at the front left of the green that deflects everything to the right. You have to be extremely careful with your approach to this green, landing something high and soft or coming in with a slight draw. If you have an awkward approach, it’s best to play just short of the green as something aggressive can kick well off to the right. But it’s also important to stop the ball from running if you’re playing short from the left side of the green because there are bunkers short right of the green. It’s a bit of a puzzling hole to play but the amazing green and the interesting conservative play make it, I think, a great one.

The medium length par 4 tenth is a bit of a rarity for a links course in that it plays straight uphill. The approach is to a skyline green, of which I unfortunately didn’t get a good picture. The key here, as is usually true of uphill holes, is to hit the ball solidly because it can be a long slog if you don’t.

The long par 3 eleventh is apparently also a newer green but I liked this one much more than three and eight. While it’s also two-tiered, the tier is steeper and I thought more in scale with the surrounding contours. Also, the flat tier planes fit in much better with the surroundings, which are much flatter than those at the third or eighth. I don’t have have a problem with two-tiered greens, but they’re not equally appropriate for all sites and the choice should be dictated by the site.

This hole also plays well, giving you ample opportunity to run the ball onto the green but with plenty of trouble wide if you miss.

I can’t believe that I didn’t get a picture of the drive on the short par 4 twelfth, which was one of the best on the course. The contours on the next two holes are very different from what we’ve encountered so far—they’re a series of low dune ridges that run parallel to the coast. The drive here is diagonal over these ridges from short-left to long-right and has two fairway bunkers on the right. The first of these bunkers is about a 210 yard carry from the medal tees but the main ones are about 240, making this a tough, but outstanding driving hole.

The dune ridges make this one of my favorite fairways that I’ve seen, with all kinds of odd lies. The green is deep and narrow, with its deepest aspect pointing to the center of the fairway. There is a mess of bunkers short but if you’ve hit a good drive, they shouldn’t be an issue. The green is flatter than most, but this is still a great short par 4.

We also have a diagonal drive over the dune ridges on the long par 4 thirteenth but this time, the run from short-right to long-left. The major issue here is the cluster of bunkers on both sides of the fairway between about 240 and 270. I’m not sure why there are so many bunkers here because the hole would be plenty long and difficult anyway.
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The approach is also a bit unnecessarily difficult, with two bunkers at the front that make it difficult to run the ball on. But all is forgiven by the green, which may be the single best green surface that I’ve ever seen. The reason why this green is so great is that it just sits on the dune ridges that we’ve been following for the last two holes. By this point, they’ve become so shallow that you could put a green directly on them without almost any softening. Sadly, I thought it was more important to take a picture of my ball sitting next to the green side bunker than to take one of the green. Oops.

Fourteen is a real ball-buster of a par 5 that’s cost a few people the Open Championship, most recently Dustin Johnson, who sent his approach sailing over the out-of-bounds fence onto neighboring Prince’s. There’s a burn along the out-of-bounds on the right and another crossing the fairway at about 315, which create a tendency to bailout left.

But doing so makes the next shot very difficult. This must be one of the world’s great second shots on a par 5. The burn continues to run up the right side all the way to the green and there are two bunkers in the middle of the fairway about 70 yards short of the green. You can bailout left of them, but these creates an awkward angle as the green is completely protected in its front-left by bunkers. From this angle, you’re also playing your approach directly at the burn. As we learned from Dustin Johnson, there’s a world of trouble if you go for the green. The smart thing to do here is just to lay back to 100 yards, where the fairway is about 60 yards wide.

The long par 4 fifteenth concludes what might be the hardest three hole stretch that I’ve played. Like thirteen, the drive is just brutal with bunkers up both sides of the fairway between 240 and 280. And even if you hit a long drive in the fairway, the approach is extremely difficult because the entrance to the green is completely blocked by bunkers. The green is narrow and has a pretty good drop-off to the right. Even more than the fourth hole, this one just screams ‘unfair’ to most golfers. But hey, the point is to make the lowest score that you can, not hit the green in two or make par. An intelligent play here if you don’t have a favorable approach would be to layup about 50 yards short of the green up the left side, which leaves a straight-forward pitch on.

Although it’s a less obvious tournament-ending candidate than the fourteenth, the ~160 yard par 3 sixteenth did just that with Thomas Björn’s chances in 2003. The green is heavily guarded by bunkers in front, but it’s the one down the slope just to its right that ended his chances.

Seventeen is an elegant long par 4 over rolling ground. The fairway is pretty wide open but the approach to the large, elevated green is a good one, with ample room to run the ball onto the green but a false front for weak shots and bunkers wide for inaccurate ones.

The eighteenth is an excellent long par 4 finisher, with occasional fairway bunkers up the left side and one through the right around 300 yard out. It’s not the most strategic finishing hole, but the ground slopes gently to the left and if you’re not careful with your drive, you could easily end up in one of the bunkers. And while again I didn’t get a picture, the green is outstanding and a fitting place to finish—although it’s a pretty tame setting with no fans or grandstands.

Royal St. George’s was a pretty great start to what would be two-and-a-half years of golf travels during which I would see almost all of the best courses across southern England and Wales. Although the Old Course at Sunningdale makes it a tough call, it’d not a stretch to say that the first course that I played was the best one. To be fair to other courses, I don’t think that I’ve seen a course with the natural advantages of Royal St. George’s. This land is perfect for golf, with tremendous variety in contours and enough land to easily build another nine holes.

But even though there are to my mind a few missteps, the architecture is so interesting too. The course doesn’t seem to be bound by a sense of what a hole should be. Some of them are extremely hard, probably harder than it’s reasonable to design something to be. Some holes don’t offer you an opportunity to set up a good angle to the green. But the point is to get the lowest score that you can, not to give you an opportunity to make the hole make perfect sense. So sometimes this might mean taking a very conservative approach to the front of or even short of a green that you can easily reach. You can make enough sense of all of these holes to get by, even if once in awhile you think that your great drive should have left you an easier approach.

Like my favorite course Pinehurst no. 2, there’s enough flexibility in each hole that everyone should be able to get around here—even if it’s 40 degrees fahrenheit and the wind is blowing. There are obviously great challenges for those trying to shoot a low score but the bunkers are never so numerous that it becomes difficult for the higher handicap to avoid them. Clearly the course has posed a great challenge to the greatest players in the world and I suspect that it will continue to do so. The proximity to London should guarantee its place in the Open rotation well into the future. While I always look forward to watching the Open because of the courses are great and nothing takes the pros out of their element like links golf, I especially look forward to Opens at Royal St. George’s, with its additional elements of ‘unfairness’ and the requisite complaining.

For the typical American golfer, in playing at Perranporth, you might as well be playing on the moon. There is nothing in your or anyone else’s experience in your home country which is anything like this. And except for the most adventurous or those from some remote corners of Scotland or Ireland, that’s probably true for most golfers from the British Isles too. Rare is the shot that isn’t blind at Perranporth. Pennard bills itself as the ‘Links in the Sky,’ but Perranporth one-ups that, being a links in the sky, on the side of a mountain.

Your opinion of this course is going to depend on a few things, most notably how much you care about your score and your physical condition. If the answer to the former is ‘very much’ and the answer to the latter is ‘I’m from the Atlanta suburbs,’ you might want to stay away. In southwest England, a part of the golfing world in which there’s much adventure to be found, no course is more adventurous than this. Like Cleeve Hill, I think that I’d recommend this place more to most hikers than I would most golfers.

But if you really desire wild links golf—and I think that there are many now in these times of Instagram golf course architecture influencers who do—you should make a special pilgrimage to Perranporth. If there’s a wilder course in the world, I’d love to see it. Like many of the ‘lesser’ links course in the UK, this is a James Braid design and he wasn’t shy about routing holes right across a property’s most challenging features. Although I don’t suspect that any architect could have gotten around this property without leaving something controversial (save for Tom Fazio with a fleet of bulldozers and a multi-million dollar budget…and well, that’d swap an environmental controversy for a golf one), a few of the holes give the sense that Braid was trying to outcompete the property in severity.

Having said that, I managed to shoot a good score in one of my two rounds at Perranporth, so it isn’t impossible. But it was also a cool summer day with little wind after a wet spring where the course wasn’t playing too fast. As much as I love a browned-out course, there are some links courses like Perranporth and Rye where it’s probably better to play them in softer conditions. Winter turf conditions would probably be a good time to play Perranporth, although I expect that the winter Cornish weather would add another, less enjoyable layer of adventure.


The medium-length par 4 first is a good starting hole but gives no sense of the severity to come. We play into a right-to-left sloping fairway, then to a green built up on a shelf with a bunker at its front-left. You could probably get close to the green from the tee in firm conditions, but other holes will more than make up for what you’ll gain here.

The second was one of my favorite par 5s in England. It’s basically a double dogleg, with a drive over dunes angled short-left to long-right with respect to the tee and either a blind second shot at the green over dunes on the left or a layup out to the right. While there’s an aiming marker to help show you where to go if going for the green on your second, it’s further over the dunes than you might suspect. You have to get with 70 yards of the green on this line to carry the junk.

For most, the safer play will be over the right edge of the dunes. There’s a partial view of the right side of the layup area but the further left (closer to the green) you go, the blinder the shot and the longer a carry over the dunes it becomes. Unless you play conservatively, you have a left-to-right diagonal carry on your drive and a right-to-left one you your approach. And if you play conservatively out to the right on your layup, the approach to the green becomes very awkward because there’s a mound at the right center of the green that can deflect ground approaches to all but front pins. It’s very Pete Dye-esque in its strategic concept, but the elements are all Perranporth.

The third is a very hard long par 4, downhill to a narrow fairway, then extremely uphill to a narrow two-tiered green perched on the edge of a cliff.

Four is the first of only three par 3s, but it’s an excellent set. You’d think that on such severe terrain and with none of the nonsense convention that par must be >70 that Braid would have built a few more of them. Perranporth is actually one of the few courses that I played in England with a par of 72!

Though it’s unconventional, this is just a great par 3. You can only see the top of the flagstick over the dunes in front of the tee. But unless the wind is blowing left-to-right, you should be aiming out to the right, at the left side of the dune ridge right of the green. That’s because the entrance to the green funnels balls down onto the green. If you go directly at the green and miss left, your ball may end up closer to some shipwrecks than the hole.

Provided that you can make the short carry over the dunes in front of the tee, the par 5 fifth fairway is wide open. But it’s also downhill and you must be careful not to go further than about 260 yards as the fairway is interrupted by junk as it drops a level. It’s probably best to be up the right side on the approach if you can get within 100 yards of the green as that allows you to play into the slope. But if you can’t get within 100 yards, stay left as a shot missed right might tumble into the third fairway.

Six is an uphill short par 3 with two bunkers in front of the green. To me, it was the least-distinguished of the three par 3s, but you must be sure to take enough club.

While we’ve had a few holes that are wild by normal standards so far, I think that the 365 yard par 4 seventh is the first hole that’s wild by Perranporth standards. The drive is straight uphill and blind. The fairway turns gently left and is quite narrow between big dunes left and right. I think that this drive might have more lost-ball-potential than any other that I’ve seen (I certainly saw a few).

And if you do hit the fairway, the approach is also blind. But unless you pull it into the dunes left, there’s much less lost ball potential. The greensite and the ground leading into it are outstanding.

Eight is an excellent drivable par 4 (~290 yards), but one that’s much tougher on short hitters than long hitters. For anyone who carries the ball more than 200 yard, you should just go for the green and hedge a bit left rather than right. In firm conditions or if downwind, it’d be less than a driver. But this hole is tough for short hitters because you need to be able to carry it about 170 to clear the dune ridge that bisects the fairway. If you can’t, it’s an uphill, blind second.

The par 4 ninth is only 365 yards, but it’s straight uphill. It’s easy to loose your ball right with the left-to-right slope of the ground and if you do that, it’ll make the approach to the ridge-top green that much harder.

Ten is similar to nine, but is a bit more gradually uphill from tee to green. At 560 yards, eleven is a very tough par five. The drive here isn’t too bad, but it becomes quite confusing after that. Once you reach the first aiming post, the hole goes over the dunes to the right, not toward the second aiming post on the left…

Like on the second, it’s a pretty good carry over these dunes, but that’s the direct line to the green. There isn’t as high a premium on placement of the second here—just get it down there as far as you can and try not to yank it left into the fifteenth fairway (to which belongs the second aiming post). I didn’t get a picture unfortunately, but the green is elevated and tough to hit.

The next two holes, both short par 4s, are about as wild as I think golf can get. Both are blind over dunes to fairways nestled down into valleys between them. This is also the highest part of the course, with maximum exposure to the wind. There’s decent amount of fairway on twelve but your approach will be blind to another ridge-top green from most of it. Thirteen has a wild back tee on the top of a dune and even from there, you can barely see anything. There was less room off the tee here and the greensite makes it look like you’re playing off the edge of the world…which many of us actually will. The green is narrow, but quite deep.

Turning back, the ~400 yard par 4 fourteenth is named ‘Braid’s Best’ and while I’m not sure that I agree with that, it’s a good hole. Of course, it’s also a very tough one, especially for short hitters because it requires a ~160 yard carry to get through the first gap in the dunes. The approach is straight uphill and will be difficult no matter how good a drive you hit.

Fifteen is a relative breather after the last few holes, being ~350 yards and only gently uphill. While it isn’t the only hole with bunkers, it’s the only hole in which I thought they played a real role. There are two left of the green and one short-right. That’s a third of the course’s total bunkers! It certainly doesn't need any more.

The downhill, ~200 yard par 3 sixteenth is excellent. You can see the right edge of the green from the tee, but most of the green is obscured by a dune and provided that you can make the 160 yard carry downhill (not a given for everyone, especially in weather conditions that are probably common here), that’s where you should aim. The green is simple and beautiful.

I found the 390 yard seventeenth to be Braid's brutal-est. It’s uphill, fairly narrow, and has a reverse camber fairway, which doglegs left but slopes right. It’s easy to send your drive sailing into the caravan park nestled in the dunes just right of the fairway. The approach is uphill but widens as you near the green.

Eighteen is a very short par 4 (~280) over the road leading to the aforementioned caravan park…which again is where you might end up if you hit a slice. There’s a pretty good rise just short of the green that will reject many attempts from the tee but even if that happens, the blind pitch isn’t too hard.

While Perranporth wasn’t the last course that I played on my summer 2016 tour of southwest England and Wales, it was the climax of the trip. Not in the sense that I thought that it was the best course, but because it was the most memorable and the purest expression of its landscape. While I said that there’s almost certainly nothing like it in the US, I’d liken it to the British counterpart to Tobacco Road. Both are unusual and you’ll wonder what the hell was going on in the architect’s mind, but both tell you a lot about their respective landscapes.

While I’m not sure that it’s a better course, I certainly prefer Perranporth to Tobacco Road. Perranporth is severe because it’s on a severe piece of ground. While I credit Mike Strantz for making use of the ‘natural’ features of that unusual mining spoils property, too much of what’s unusual and of questionable playing value was of his contrivance, not dictated by what was there (i.e. the fifteenth and seventeenth greens). Perranporth may have some over-the-top holes, but there’s nothing contrived about them—that’s just what the landscape offered. You have this at Tobacco Road too with green sites like eleven and thirteen. But for maybe every two great uses of a natural feature, there’s one designed one that is neither natural nor particularly good for golf.

If a new course were being built on Perranporth’s land today, I’d hope (but wouldn’t bet) that it’d be exactly the same way as Perranporth, even if it’d be possible to build a ‘better’ course. Not everything needs to be perfect. Not everything needs to be a ‘world top 100 course’ that low handicap golfers will love. We need to learn to love the grit in things, to learn to love their natural characteristics with all of what may seem to be blemishes. Because these days—and this doesn’t just apply to golf courses—it’s easy to make things really good. We have the equipment, we have the knowledge—although with golf courses that’s thanks to people like Tom Doak visiting places like Perranporth.

But it’s really hard to replicate the nuances and randomness of nature and it kind of defeats the purpose to try. Nature is highly individualistic…every piece of land is a little bit different. Unless we’re in Palm Springs, we should want golf courses to tell us even more about their land more than the architect who built them. Because a golf course doesn’t start like a painting or a symphony with a blank canvas or empty staff paper. It’s starts with something that may be more nuanced and interesting than anything that you could do with it.

Whatever you think of it, you certainly can’t deny that the Perranporth golf course tells us first and foremost about the Perranporth land. So whether it was by intention or there just wasn’t much else that he could do, James Braid gave with a course that is the perfect expression of the site’s nature. He did his job well here.

Of all of the courses that I planned to see on my west country golf trip in summer 2016, none was higher on my list than St. Enodoc, tucked way down to the south and west in Cornwall, one of the few remaining vestiges of Celtic culture on the island of Great Britain. The whole region is a major tourist destination, with the nearby town of Newquay (pronounced New-Key) being reminiscent of the Atlantic City boardwalk (probably without the crime, although I’m not certain). Like many vacation areas, there are nicer and shabbier spots and St. Enodoc is in the town of Rock, which is definitely in the former category.

But the course itself is a James Braid design and if you know anything about Braid designs, you know that upper-class-in-feel they are not. The course is on a very unusual two-part piece of property: (1) a big, fantastic chunk of duneland, but one with only enough room for about 12 holes and (2) a narrow strip of farmland, which itself is divided into a flat portion and the side of a steep hill. The result is very Braid, with several outstanding holes (with some very wild features) but then a few lesser ones. I know that the club has made some tweaks to the holes in the latter category over the years so I’m not sure that Braid is always to be given credit/blame.

The result is an excellent course overall, but one that isn’t as consistent as the other top tier courses that I played in England and which definitely has a more rudimentary feel than most of those. But it’s important to remember that while this course spends a lot of time on world top 100 lists now, this is a very recent phenomenon. I think that for most of its history, until the last two decades when Tom Doak and others started championing it, it was seen by most as a ‘holiday course,’ a course on sporting land with unconventional holes that could have maybe been done better if the whole thing had been taken more seriously. But no one was taking it that seriously, so it was fine. Just because the course was in an upper class area didn’t mean that it had to be an upper class course. The members could play Sunningdale at home.

I like the fact that the course often feels a bit rudimentary in design. There are plenty of natural features that make most of the holes interesting and even where there aren’t, the elements will probably make it interesting enough. My two rounds at St. Enodoc were by far the windiest conditions in which I’ve ever played. And it was a sustained wind probably in the 20-30 mph. range. That made otherwise mundane holes like 12 and 13 plenty challenging. I also learned that the wind doesn’t affect all points on a property equally. Perhaps a bit ironically, it was less of a factor in the linksy dunes holes. But it tore across the more open farmland parts of the property like the breath of hell (but colder).


I thought that St. Enodoc had one of the best opening holes that I played in England, a ~525 yard par 5. It looks like an innocuous drive and a lot of the time, it probably is…but not when the wind is blowing left-to-right at 20 mph. The wind made the course especially difficult in the summer of 2016 because it had been a wet spring and the rough was very thick. Many of the fairways here aren’t especially wide either.

The second shot is blind over an aiming post and seeing that the hole bends right, you might want to play up the right side if you have the length to go for the green. You’d better hit a strong shot if you do because the right side is dunes and long grass and a poor angle across the slope into the elevated green. The approach is straight-forward if you layup to the left—you’ll be playing into the slope from here.

Turning the opposite direction, the long par 4 second was very tough. As you can see, the fairway here is quite narrow. The club should mow out the fairway more to the left because it’s very difficult to get a view of the green, which is hidden off to the right behind dunes, unless you’re in the left rough.

The third is another long par 4 on the card but plays quite a bit shorter because the fairway runs almost straight downhill with almost 50 feet of drop. A decent length hitter will need to club down off the tee because at ~275 from the regular tees, a road and a stone wall cross the fairway. And the road runs at a diagonal from short-right to long left so if you push it, you have even less room (and the wind is left-to right). But you want to be in the right side of the fairway for the delightful approach because the green angles from front-right to back-left and rough/mound left of the green will either capture or kick your ball away.

Simply put, the fourth is the greatest drivable par 4 that I’ve seen and is a strong contender for the best hole that I played in England. It’s about 280 yards from the regular tees but plays modestly uphill. What makes this hole so great is that for any shot that you might play, there’s a lot to think about and a risk reward element. For about the last 80 yards of the hole, a stone wall runs up the right side of the fairway. Because the hole doglegs left, you’re playing at this wall at a diagonal so if you go for the green, the more you push your drive, the shorter the distance to send your ball sailing over the wall and into the cattle.

As interesting as that is, it might even be a more interesting shot if you layup. The green is perched on a hill and while the fairway gradually rises to the green from the right side, the hill is more abrupt from the left. Anything from the left side of the fairway will be completely blind into the shallow aspect of the green…with the aforementioned stone wall and cattle on the through-line.

If you layup up the fairway to the right, you can get a much clearer view and a much better angle to the green. But the rub here is that the fairway sits in a corner of the property boundary and the further right in the fairway that you want to place you shot, the more of a carry you have over bushes and another stone wall that runs perpendicular into the previous one. For a layup, the optimal spot is in the corner where the two walls meet…which is also the riskiest part of the fairway to play to. But if you hit it here, you’ll have a flat lie, a clear view, and altogether a simple 80 yard shot down the deepest aspect of the green.

I don’t think that there’s a thing that you could do that would improve this hole.

Five is a medium-length par 3 over a valley to a shallow, wide green. While distance control is important, this hole shouldn’t be too hard…unless the wind is blowing 25-30 mph. In my second round, I hit my shot fat. It popped up so high into the wind that I thought I was going to be able to catch it when it came down.

Six is undoubtedly the most famous hole at St. Enodoc. It’s a medium-length par 4 but features a completely blind approach over a huge dune and what must be one of the world’s most memorable bunkers. The bunker wasn’t quite as wild-looking when I played as in some of the pictures that I’ve seen, probably because they’ve grassed the edges to prevent erosion. There isn’t much to do on the drive as your second will always be blind. But you should try to get it as close to the end of the fairway as you can (~250-265 yards) because the green is narrow, deep, and you want the shortest possible second.

While the green plays up a half pipe in the dunes, you should play conservatively to the front because there’s less distance between the long grass the further into the green that you go. It’s possible to hit what you thought was a good second shot here and never find the ball…

Except for the fifth hole, the opening stretch was relatively free from the fury of the wind and I played them pretty well in both rounds. That all came to an end on the seventh, which plays out to flatter, more open links land. This would be a pretty easy hole under normal conditions because the fairway is quite wide between bunkers left at ~225 and right at ~270. But with an into wind from the left, it was almost impossible to start your drive far enough left to keep it out of the right rough.

Eight is a par 3 of ~155 yard completely fronted by bunkers. Normally this would be fine but playing straight downwind, it was very difficult to carry the bunkers and hold the ball on the green.

Nine is a beautiful par 4 with a wide fairway, but one that’s cut off by a dune ridge about 275 off the tee. Like on three, it’s best to club down off the tee because the hole runs about 30 feet downhill from the tee to this point. Also, the further back you stay from this ridge, the better view of the green that you’ll have. The green is both deep and wide and this hole shouldn’t be too difficult.

The short par 5 tenth is a very controversial hole and I tend not to like the holes that get labelled controversial because they usually have some awkwardness that makes them not really playable for many. But I think that this is a great hole, albeit still quite awkward. First of all, you cannot hit driver off the tee unless you’re a very short hitter because the fairway abruptly narrows at a hill 240 from the tee.

Well, let me qualify that; don’t hit driver unless you’ve got a three-quarter swing where you keep the ball low and get some run. Because even though the fairway narrows at 240, you can bank your ball off the low part of the slope and run it into the sliver of fairway off to the left, which will significantly shorter the approach. I was able to do this in one of my rounds and it left me with only about 160 yards to the green. It’s still an awkward shot because the bushes short-left of the green were overgrown and you can only see the right edge of the green. I believe that the club has cut them back since, which would greatly help the hole.

I’m not sure that the hole would work for everyone because the layup area is very narrow if you can’t get your second within about 50 yards of the green. It’s also dangerous because a major local walking path runs up the left side of the fairway and the walkers, whom you can’t see from the tee, are liable to pop into the fairway.

Eleven is a bit of a dull long par 3 but it was plenty difficult in the heavy winds. The most interesting thing about the hole is the course namesake old church next to the tee.

While twelve plays over the same dull farmland, there’s a bit more interest here. The hole turns gently left and we have a ~190 yard carry over a hedge on the left side. You want to go up the left side here because there are two well-placed bunkers on the outside of the dogleg 265-275. The approach was very difficult because the green is convex and it was difficult to keep the ball from rolling off the edges in the wind.

The next three holes play up then down the side of the hill and were a slog with the wind into and from the right. Thirteen is probably the dullest hole on the course but uphill and into the wind, it was very difficult. Fourteen was also uphill and very difficult, but much more interesting. The drive is into a severely left-to-right sloping fairway. There’s a deep bunker through the fairway at about 260 yards, but it was impossible for me to reach this in these conditions. Still, you want to drive it as far as you can to have a good view of this green, which is perched on a rock wall that runs up its right side.

Fifteen is a downhill par 3 with bunkers and a paved, one lane road running across the front almost flush with the green. No run-up shots here; if you land just short, you’ll hit the road and who knows where the ball will go. Of course in 30 mph. of wind, I didn’t know where my ball was going anyway.

We’re back in the dunes for the last three holes. The first of these is a long par 5 which plays gradually uphill for the first 300 yards, then back downhill to a left-to-right sloping fairway with a well-defended green tucked back up in the dunes to the left. While the hole is about 550 now, it used to be about 475 to a green on flatter land in the current layup zone. The current green is probably the most manmade-looking thing on the course and I’m sure that I would have preferred the look of the old green, but the green is interesting and it’s a very good hole.

The new green on sixteen also means that we have about a 100 yard walk back to the par 3 seventeenth tee, but it’s worth it. This hole plays about 200 yards from an elevated tee to a green that’s partially obscured by a big dune short-left. While it’s a tough shot, it looks tougher than it is because there’s a good amount of room between the dune and the green and the area around the green is mostly forgiving.

The long par 4 finisher is an excellent one. The drive seems narrow between dunes on the left and right, but I don’t think that it was more that 210-220 yards to get past the big one on the left. It’s best to carry this and go up the left side if you can because from there’s a bunker/long grass in line with the approach to the green from the right side of the fairway. It’s all open fairway from the left side, enabling a run-up shot.

St. Enodoc has been the subject of quite a few articles in the past few years and has gone from being a hidden gem to being considered one of the top courses in the UK. While I’ve only played courses across the south of England and Wales, there’s no doubt that it’s top shelf among these, belonging in the same company as other excellent links courses like Royal Cinque Ports and heathland courses like St. George’s Hill or Walton Heath. I wouldn’t quite put it in the top top tier with the Old at Sunningdale, West Sussex, or Royal St. George’s. There are more dull holes than on any of the above courses and to be honest, while the 5 or 6 best holes are world class, there’s a pretty good step down in quality after that.

Because of this, I’m skeptical that I’d find St. Enodoc to be a world top 100 course if I had played enough contenders. But this is of no practical significance. It’s worth making a special effort to play here. It’s definitely the best course in southwest England and it’s worth the 4-5 hour drive from London, especially if you make a few days’ trip of it and play other great local courses, like my next-up, Perranporth.

Like a few other courses that I saw during my time in the UK, Royal North Devon, a.k.a. Westward Ho! (the ! is the town’s name and is obligatory), has undergone some changes since my visit in the summer of 2016. While changes at other courses like Swinley Forest and Liphook were discretionary, those at Royal North Devon have been necessitated by the ever shifting coastline, which has started to consume the dunes around the seventh green and the flat lowland of the eighth hole. Many have lamented the coming loss of the seventh green and especially the ninth in its current form (there doesn’t seem to be much grief for the eighth), but golf courses are a part of nature and the seas and coastline are ever-shifting, even before our present era of climate change.

I won’t comment on the proposed new holes but I don’t believe that they will change the spirit of this place, which, even though I only played it one time, is one of the closest to my heart of any that I’ve seen. It’s a bit hard to explain; it’s certainly a links course, being on poor sandy soil next to the see that’s unusable for farming. But with a few very notable exceptions, it has some of the flattest fairway not only of any links course, but of any course. And if you’ve read my review of Saunton’s East Course, you know that I’m not a fan of flat fairways on a links course. But unlike the two Saunton courses in July 2016 after a wet spring and early summer in the southwest of England, the flat fairways of Royal North Devon played like an airport runway. It was my first experience with truly firm and fast fairways.

So I think that that was part of my fondness for the course. But more than that, I think that it’s about the way that this course sits on the land and is part of its surroundings. I don’t think that I’ve seen another course that’s so perfectly in sync with its surroundings. Like many other courses in the west, much of it is on common land, so the sheep are ever-present. But it’s the architecture that sticks with me the most. Everything is so simple. I’m amazed by a hole like the thirteenth, which is on I think the flattest piece of land that I’ve ever seen for a golf hole but with a few scoops of dirt for some bunkers and a mound on which to build a green, manages to be as interesting as many holes on the most dramatic terrain. I’ve never seen a course that gets so much out of so little. I’ve never seen a course that imposes so little on its surroundings. Like Cleeve Hill, if they stopped maintaining the golf course, it’d probably still be recognizable and playable in 25 years (if the sea hasn't devoured it by then).

Royal North Devon is also the oldest course in England, operating since 1864. The clubhouse has a library appropriate for such a storied place and a true lover of the game could spend a weekend here, not set foot on the golf course, and still be completely satisfied. But if you do go out on the golf course, golf course aside, you’ll experience yet another thing that endeared this place to me: a course packed with four balls where the pace of play will still be under four hours and with which your two ball of Americans will struggle to keep up.


Someone visiting Royal North Devon for the first time who’s seen the course’s lofty place in the English course rankings will probably stand on the first tee, look out over the first fairway, and think ‘What the hell is this? This isn’t a golf course, let alone a great golf course. It’s grazing land for some sheep.’ While the drive on this ~500 yard par 5 is easy, the hole gets more interesting near the green. The burn that runs up the right side crosses the fairway at a diagonal starting at 85 yards from the middle of the green and running just short and left of it. For someone who’s hit a good drive and can go for the green, it really gives you something to think about. When I played, the hole played into the wind and it gave be something to think about on my 8-iron third shot.

The long par 4 second is one of Royal North Devon’s toughest. It doglegs gently to the left and a burn/road run along the right side of the fairway up to just short of the green. If you try to cut the corner, there’s marshy junk up the left side. This hole was made especially difficult by the into wind quartering from the left. I thought that the green was excellent—slightly elevated with much subtle contour.

The drive on the medium-long par 4 third is a very English experience, over a busy road that leads to a beach just left of the fairway. It’s also one that presents a big decision; there are two bunkers that bisect the fairway at about 260 yard. If you can’t carry them, you’ll have a mid-iron approach to a large green with flanking bunkers front-right and left.

One thing that I haven’t mentioned about Royal North Devon is that while the course fits with its surroundings better than almost any I can think of, there are a very memorable manmade impositions--none more than the bunker off the 380 yard par 4 fourth tee. It’s only about a 165 yard carry from the regular tees but that was enough to get both of my playing partners to aim right of it…one not so successfully as we can see below.

While I went on about the flatness of the course in my introduction, this and the next few holes are quite bumpy. The undulating green sits below the fairway and is well-guarded in front by several bunkers. It’s a pretty easy hole for most as you can just bomb away off the tee without consequence, but it’s certainly not one without its charms.

The routing does a switchback with the short par 3 fifth to bring us into the course’s short but glorious stretch in the dunes. This hole played directly into a good two club wind and with the green being elevated and surrounded by bunkers, it was among the more treacherous 130 yards of golf hole that I’ve played.

Then we come to the mid-length par 4 sixth, which is just as good a golf hole as I’ve ever seen. This may be best 400 yards of golfing terrain in the world. It’s the bumpiest fairway that I’ve ever seen. Have a look at this hole (and all the others on the course) on YouTube.

But it’s also not just about the greatness of the land. This is strategically one of the best holes that I’ve ever played. While it appears that you can hit it anywhere off the tee, the fairway has just enough bunkers demanding much care. There are two barely visible pot bunkers about 210 yards out just left of the fairway, then another ~275 out in the left center, then two more that bisect the fairway at about 310.

Ok, but there’s nothing between the bunkers on the left at 210 and that at 275. That’s the direct line to the green, so lets’ just drive it there. Well, look a bit further to the green. What do you see? It’s higher on the left than it is on the right. If you play up the left side of the fairway, you’ll be playing down the slope of the ground which, because the course is firm, is not a good idea. So you should drive it up the right side of the fairway to play your approach more into the slope. And this is more true than you can realize from the tee because the green is deep and narrow and the low ground to its right is actually a steep drop-off—the green is built up on a plateau. Right-center is what you want here.

Actually the strategy creates a bit of a moral hazard here because the optimal landing area is very close to the tenth green, about 270 out from the tee. They should put something nasty over there which would both discourage that and create an additional challenge for those trying to find the optimal spot in the fairway.

Now we come to the first of the three holes that are being changed. The seventh was a medium-length par 4 where you drove it into a vast open area and the played to the left across some sea rushes to a green tucked in the dunes. The new seventh will play up the first part of the current fairway corridor, but the sea is reclaiming the dunes around the seventh green and will, within a few years, reclaim this green too. I remembered the green as having some interesting contours but I didn’t think that this was one of the course’s strongest holes and the plans that I’ve seen for the new seventh suggest that it’ll be a better hole.

The eighth was a flat par 3 of about 185 yards and wasn’t a particularly interesting hole but was the site of one of my more memorable experiences which also illustrates something about the course. The hole was playing down a wind quartering from the left so I took an 8-iron, about two clubs less than I normally would for this distance. I hit about two inches behind the ball and it looked like it flew about 120 in the air. When I got to the other side of the sea rushes in front of the tee, I couldn’t find my ball. As I got nearer to the green, I saw that there were three balls there and my playing partners were at theirs, leaving one in the back. I walked up to it and there it was, my ball. The ground was so firm that my chunked 8-iron rolled about 60-70 yards onto the green. Actually, I wasn’t sure that this was what had happened until we were standing on the next tee watching the following group hit their tee shots. One guy took a partial swing and landed his ball a few dozen yards short of the green only to have it roll all the way to the front. The beauty of links golf.

Of the three holes that are being reworked, the plans for the ninth have been the most controversial. Back in the yellow Confidential Guide, Tom Doak noted that this was one of his favorite par 5s in the world because of the shallow green that required a careful use of the bumpy ground short and right of the green if one was to hit it from long range. I have to admit, as much as I usually agree with Doak’s opinions, I didn’t really see the magic in this one. The landing area was massive and while the green and its surroundings are among the course’s best and I could see what Doak was talking about, it didn’t leave as much of an impression on me as it did on him or as some of the other holes at Royal North Devon did on my. Still, I thought that it was very good par 5 and it would have been nice if they didn’t have to change it. Hopefully they’ve put some thought into the new version to retain some of the strengths of the old one.

The character of the course changes quite a bit for the next two holes, going from wide open to very constricted as we play through a field of sea rush grass. This spiky grass is common around the UK in marshy areas but you usually find it in discrete clumps. Here it’s a thicket. Not only can you not play out of this stuff, you shouldn’t even walk into (especially if you’re wearing shorts) because the edges are serrated and the tips are spiked. If you go looking for your golf ball, you may lose it and an eyeball too.

The rushes make for an excellent diagonal driving hazard up the left side on the medium-length par 4 tenth. There are also three bunker out to 230 on the right, making this a very tough driving hole. You’ll get a better view of the green if you can keep it near the rushes but the safest drive is something up the right side that goes ~250.

The eleventh is a 400 yard par 4 with rushes everywhere. Although it played straight downwind, the tee shot with my 2-hybrid was one of the most butt-puckering that I’ve played. While I managed to make a smooth swing and hit the fairway, the entrance to the green is blocked by bunkers and even though I was hitting a wedge, I wasn’t able to keep the ball from running through the green. Looking from above with Google Earth, I see that the hole is more open that it appears in the driving zone and it probably would have been best for me to just hit driver and try to get close enough to have a short wedge to the green.

Twelve is a much easier version of eleven as the rushes recede once you cross the clump in front of the tee. While there’s tons of room to the right, it’s best to hit your drive up the left side because there are three bunkers that guard the last 60 yards short and right of the green and anything coming from the right side will have to carry these bunkers then stop the ball down wind. The front of the green is open.

Now to the aforementioned par 5 thirteenth, only about 450 from the regular tees and with one of the widest, flattest fairways that you’ll ever see. Two bunkers cross the fairway about 170 yards from the tee and there’s another about 215 on the right. As we’ve seen, these short bunkers cause some golfers a lot of trouble and into the teeth of the wind as on this day, 170 is a plenty challenging carry for many.

The green and its surroundings are among my favorite on the course. The green is gently pushed up from its surroundings and the last 50 yards feature small but deep bunkers on both sides. There’s ample room to run the ball up onto the green but it’s very hard to hit and if you’re a bit wayward, you can find yourself with some very difficult shots. This hole gets a lot out of little and represents the course well.

The fourteenth is a long par 3 to a green with five bunkers at its front left and right. While the green is large, it’s a very tough hole. While there’s a little bit of uneasiness for the first-time player on the long par 4 fifteenth with the drive over rushes, this is probably the course’s widest fairway and you should bomb away. Still, it’s best to keep it a bit to the left as undulating ground up the right creates a blind shot. But the hole also doglegs slightly right and too far left will leave a very long approach. The green is very well protected with a center line bunker about 30 yards short and one each front left and right. It’s narrow in front but widens at the back.

Sixteen is a short par 3 that has received quite a few accolades for its well-guarded plateau green, but I think it’s the hole that I remember the least on the course. Seventeen is a long par 5 (~550) with very little trouble…until you get to the green. There’s a road that crosses the hole diagonally from short right to long left starting about 75 yards from the middle of the green. This would make the hole very interesting if you’re long enough to reach it in two but also makes it very interesting for most of the rest of us on our third if we’ve missed our drive by a bit.

The long par 4 eighteenth plays back across very flat land similar to its next door neighbor, the first. There’s a burn and rushes up the right side but plenty of room to the left. While the drive isn’t the most exciting, the approach is very tough and very good with a second, wider burn crossing the entire front of the green. This was an especially difficult shot to play downwind as it’s tough to carry the burn and keep the ball on the green.

While there isn’t much about the course history on the club’s website, I learned through a little searching around the internet that the original course was laid out by Old Tom Morris but the current version is largely the work of Herbert Fowler. I should have figured this. Like Walton Heath, the course gets an incredible amount out of mostly modest terrain because Fowler was a master at design efficiency, using a few small scale elements to create great interest. He used bunkers a bit more liberally here on several holes than at Walton Heath but this course doesn’t have a natural secondary hazard like heather, which is in such abundance there (the rushes aren't a good secondary hazard the same way a pit of spikes wouldn't be a good hazard on a golf course). The greens construction is almost always the minimum necessary but as we’ve seen, this can produce some fantastic greens.

There can’t be too many places today that are closer to the original spirit of the game than Royal North Devon. There was some land that wasn’t useful for much of anything except grazing some sheep, so some guys decided to go out there and whack a ball around. That’s pretty much how it still feels today, especially on the first and last few holes. It doesn’t look like what anyone today would think of as a golf course and it doesn’t play like another course I’ve seen. The hand of man is certainly here as there are a lot of bunkers and some greens shaping. But because those hands belonged to Herbert Fowler, it all blends in so well that you don’t even notice that much of it is there.

Apart from my concern about the future existence of the course in light of climate change, I’m a bit concerned about how the course would play in the winter months. It’s very low lying and apparently the opening and closing holes are on clay. I suspect that these holes might be substantially less enjoyable and borderline unplayable if it’s been very wet. I wonder if I would have enjoyed the course as much if I had played it in the winter. And with the rising sea levels, this is only going to become more of a problem. The club recently celebrated the 150th birthday of the course but within a few years already had to make changes to accommodate this. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be surprised if they have to make a few more before the course reaches 200.

To me, Royal North Devon resides in a place near the true soul of golf. It may not be the best course that I played in my three years in the UK, but it's the one to which I'd most like to return. I hope it will remain for many generations.

At the edge of the Braunton Burrows, one of the largest dunescapes in England, is Saunton Golf Club, home of 36 holes of links golf. While both courses are typically ranked in the UK top 100, it’s the East Course that is considered the championship course. It’s often said that this is course is at the top of the list of links courses that haven’t but could host the Open Championship. While I haven’t played all of the contenders, this would certainly be a suitable venue—it’s challenging without being too quirky and there’s a ton of room around the course for tournament infrastructure.

While the challenging-without-being-quirky aspect would be a plus for this course in holding the Open Championship, it was the reason why the course didn’t do as well in my estimation as some of the other links courses in west England/Wales like Pennard, Royal North Devon, and St. Enodoc: it’s pretty straightforward. That’s not to say that it isn’t an interesting and excellent course. It is; in fact, the greens, while a bit modern-looking in contour are one of the most interesting (and consistent) sets on any course that I played in England.

But unlike most links courses, many of the fairways lack the interesting small contours of my favorite links courses like Royal St. George’s and Royal Cinque Ports. Apparently the course was used for military training in WWII and the fairways became flatter as a result. Saunton East felt more like a parkland course in a links setting to me. Part of this was due to the fact that 2016 had been a wet spring across England and the fairways were not firm. This was puzzling to me because we had played Royal North Devon, which is just to the south the day before and those fairways were very firm. But I don’t think that that’s the club’s fault because it’s not like they’re irrigating their fairways.


The East Course starts with perhaps its most difficult hole: a >470 yard par 4. Despite perhaps being a bit too strong a jolt of difficulty, it’s a very good hole. The major feature is a big hill on the right with a single bunker but this is only about a 200 yard carry. Still, you want to keep your drive up the right side because it gives you an angle straight down the deep, but narrow green. The green is the first of many excellent ones.

The par 5 second hole was, from the tees that I played (~480), one of the toughest driving holes that I’ve seen. First, there are two bunkers about on the right about 240 out. Second and more important, a burn is piped under the fairway at ~255 but is exposed both left and right, leaving either a layup or a drive threaded through about a 30 yard gap. It would have been easier if I had just moved to the back tees. The green is fairly generic, built on a plateau at the base of a dune.

The bunkerless 400 yard par 4 third is one of the course’s best although it also illustrates what was, for me, the course’s primary drawback: the fairway is surrounded by dunes, yet is fairly flat. Still, the dunes make for a challenging drive and the approach shot becomes a bit easier if you carry the dunes on the left. The approach to the narrow deep green isn’t the most interesting but the green is outstanding.

Four is a longer par 4 with a very interesting drive. While the fairway is wide, unless you’re in the left third of it, your approach will be blind over a large dune about 250 from the back tees. At that point, the fairway enters a narrowing gap between this dune and several bunkers on the left. The green is large and receptive.

Five is a very short par 3 to another wavy and, to my mind, modern-looking green. But it’s none the worse for that.

The par 4 sixth is probably the dullest hole on the course, playing across flat land. While there’s a burn running along the fairway on the right, there’s no trouble if you cut the dogleg up the left side. The 430 yard seventh also plays across flat land but is much more interesting, with bunkers on the left at ~245 and 270 and a large, well-defended green with outstanding contour.

Like number three, the medium-length par 4 eighth showcases the strengths and weaknesses of the East Course. The drive is the course’s quirkiest; completely blind over abrupt dunes just in front of the tee. But the fairway is very wide and flat. I like it when blind shots play to forgiving landing areas, but this one crosses the line between forgiving and dull. But then the second shot is very interesting, with the green in a dell surrounded by dunes.

Although I’m not sure how many would share my view, I thought that the medium-length par 4 ninth was the course’s best. The key driving feature here is a bunker on the right side of the fairway about 280 yards from the tips.

The brilliance of this hole has to do with the angle/contours of the green and how these structure the best way to play the hole. The hole doglegs slightly left at the aforementioned bunker and the green angles from front-right to back-left behind a bunker and dunes. Unless you drive your ball to the outside of the dogleg, near this bunker, you’ll have a poor view of the green and awkward angle. The green is also the course’s best, with a high front-right shoulder, lower middle, and tier in the back. It’s narrow and will be very difficult to hit if you’re coming at it from the left side of the fairway. Altogether one of the best ninth holes that I’ve played (just below Swinley Forest’s) and probably one of England’s best mid-length par 4s.

The short par 4 tenth plays to a wide, flat fairway which should be easy to hit. Unfortunately I pulled my layup to the left and it was my first introduction to the spiky sea rush grass. I saw this grass on several British courses in marshy areas, but it was most prevalent here and at neighboring Royal North Devon (where one hole plays through a thicket of it). You don’t want to go searching for your ball in this stuff, which will slice up your hands with its serrated edges and blind you with its spiked tips.

The green is elevated with a false front and two bunkers short.

Eleven is another short par 4 that probably gets the most accolades of all of the course’s holes. While the fairway is flat and the view from the tee a bit dull, there’s a lot of trouble out there. The course boundary line, demarcated by a burn, cuts into the fairway at 250. There are two bunkers on the left just short of this.

I’m not as big a fan of this hole as others because I don’t see any reason to take on the risk of driving it between the bunkers and the boundary line. You can easily layup to about 125 which, as long as you’re not too far right in the fairway, leaves an open view to a green that is fairly large. The front right of the green comes to the edge of the burn and if the flag is there, a little more left in the fairway is preferable. It’s a very good hole, but I preferred the more contour/angle-driven ninth.

Twelve is another medium-length (~410) par 4 playing across flat land although there are bushes just left of the fairway and thick grass right, so it demands accuracy. I remember the green as being interesting but apparently it wasn’t interesting enough for me to take a picture of it.

Thirteen is a ~160 yard par 3 to an elevated and wavy green. This was the green where I remember thinking for the first time how modern the broad, sweeping contours on the greens looked. But again, while this might be different than on other links courses, where the best greens are created by small scale random ridges and bumps, it’s a great strength of the course.

Fourteen is a very difficult par 4. Very long (>450) and very narrow with two bunkers on the right just where you’d like to drive it. But the narrow approach to the green and the greensite are very attractive.

Fifteen is a short par 5 with a wide fairway but you still have to be careful here—there’s a burn that runs diagonally along the fairway on the left and if you pull your drive, it’s easy to reach. The fairway is also interrupted by mounds about 280 from the standard tees. While the visibility up the right side of the fairway is poorer, it’s best to aim here. The approach is to an elevated green well-guarded by two bunkers.

Sixteen is a long and awkward but very good par 4 that begins an excellent closing stretch. This is one of the tougher drives that I’ve ever seen because (1) the visibility from the tee is poor and (2) the fairway has a reverse camber, doglegging left but sloping to the right. There are two bunkers on the right starting at about 260 from the regular tees and it is very easy to run into these. But it’s difficult to get yourself to aim left because the further left you aim, the less you can see.

The approach to the green is also blind because the green is in a dell on the edge of the dune ridge on the left. I judged (I think correctly) that there was too much risk in trying to hit driver off the tee but if you lay back here, you’ll have a very long second. It’s pretty hard to take fewer than 5 shots on this hole.

Seventeen is an excellent ~200 yard par 3 that gives you ample room to run the ball onto the green. I think that one of the reasons that I liked this hole so much is that the land here is much bumpier than most of that across the rest of the the course, something that I really like in a links.

Speaking of links (or really British) course features, the drive on the mid-length par 4 eighteenth plays mostly blind across the back edge of the seventeenth green. This is another tough driving hole, with the fairway narrowing between dunes on the right and three bunkers on the left starting ~230 out. From here, the hole turns right and heads uphill to a green guarded by 5 bunkers just below the clubhouse’s back patio.

Thinking back over the East Course, I’m remembering it a bit more fondly than how I thought of it at the time. I had played it just after I played Burnham and Berrow and felt a very clear preference for the latter at the time. The main reason was that I didn’t like how flat most of the East’s fairways were and felt that Burnham’s were more what I liked in a links, with lots of random small bumps and ridges.

But reflecting on it a few years later, the strengths of the East stand out a little more. The main strength is the greens, which I would have acknowledged at the time constitute one of the best sets on any course that I had played in England. Even on the links courses with the best sets of greens like Royal St. George’s and Royal Cinque Ports, only a half dozen or so of the greens were really interesting and the rest were fairly modest. That’s not true here—most of the greens are interesting and while as I’ve mentioned they’re a bit different in style than other links courses, they’re none the worse for that.

I think that I also prefer the shaping on Saunton’s East Course to much of that on Burnham and Berrow. Both Burnham and the East were originally designed by Herbert Fowler but were heavily reworked, Burnham by Colt and Alison, the East by CK Cotton. Despite the bigger names of the former, I think that Cotton did a better job (or at least one more to my liking) with the greens here. In addition to the contours, the green sites are well-chosen and well-shaped. Many rest simply on the ground with interesting interior contours, like Fowler’s remaining greens at Burnham and at Walton Heath. I supposed that my preference for these simpler green complexes over Colt’s more heavily shaped ones is just that rather than based on some objective truth about quality. But I do believe that in beautiful, natural settings like true linksscape, the architect should put in a little extra effort to try to work in and around the bounty that was given to them, rather than build their own thing upon it.

On the Somerset coast, just south of the quirky Cotswolds courses like Cleeve Hill and Painswick and just north of the great Devon and Cornwall courses like Royal North Devon, Saunton, and St. Enodoc lies another course that is somewhat under the radar for most traveling golfers: Burnham and Berrow. Like the latter three, this is a true links course, lying on a relatively flat plane of sand dunes next to the sea. Unlike Saunton’s East course and more recently St. Enodoc, Burnham doesn’t seem to get a lot of support as being one of Britain’s top links courses. Now I haven’t played enough of Britain's top links courses to render a verdict but I can say that Burnham is an excellent course and one that, with a few tweaks and perhaps easier access through the neighboring town of Berrow, would make an excellent Open venue.

The club website gives an excellent history of all of the holes. The course has tone through an extensive series of changes since it was first expanded to 18 holes by Herbert Fowler in 1910 by architecture heavyweights including Harry Colt and Charles Alison. Apparently the Fowler version was very quirky with a lot of blind shots but Colt ‘modernized’ it in the early 20s, removing these and creating the basis of the more standard course that we experience today. Burnham is one of the least quirky links courses that I’ve played and I think that most American golfers would like it. As you can tell from some of my other reviews, I like a quirky layout and I wouldn’t be surprised if I would have liked the Fowler version more than the current Colt/Alison/Hawtree version. But it’s still an excellent course and one which everyone headed for St. Enodoc must play.


For my liking, Burnham has one of the best three hole opening stretches in southern England. The first is a 380 yard par 4 where the fairway is pinched by dunes at about 260 from the back tee. Anywhere short of this is fine (no point taking the risk and driving it through) but you must hit a straight drive or your approach will likely be blind over the dunes—especially if you miss right. The green is narrow but deep and angles gently from front right to back left.

The 420 yard par 4 second plays to a rolling fairway lined by dunes on both sides with a dip on the right side about 255 yards from the middle tees. Like on the first hole, there’s no point in taking the risk to try to drive into the gap. If you can get it just short of this, you’ll have a simple approach to another deep but narrow green. This one is much more undulating than the first, perched up on a ledge (as Colt liked to do) and with a steep false front. This green has the proto-modern look that we find on a lot of Colt’s heathland courses like Swinley Forest and St. George’s Hill.

The 370 yard third was, along with the fifteenth, my favorite hole at Burnham. That’s because it features an excellent diagonal drive over bunkers and a blind punchbowl green that’s a bit quirkier than most here. Looking at the course’s website, I see that my fondness for this hole is not incidental—it’s one of the holes that wasn’t designed by Colt. It’s actually a remnant of the pre-Fowler nine hole course laid out in 1897 by Charles Gibson.

We’re back to Colt with the par 5 fourth, a hole that I think could use a bit of work—namely some bunkers. The hole features an interesting-looking diagonal drive over the dune ridge on the right but it’s less interesting than it seems at first; there’s ample room and no fairway bunkers. If I could only criticize one thing about Burnham, it’d be the lack of fairway bunkering. Most fairways just have one small bunker that’s easy to avoid. The approach to the green, sited between two dunes is attractive and a little easier from the right side of the fairway.

The par 3 fifth is very Colt featuring a plateau green below a dune on the left and deep bunkers front and right. With its narrow green that was very difficult to hit in what wasn’t even a particularly heavy wind, this hole with fit in nicely at the high temple of difficult par 3s, Rye.

Six is one of the holes that Fred Hawtree designed when he added the nine-hole Channel Course in the late 70s. It’s an awkward hole with the fairway narrowing to just a few yards at about 260. The green has a bunker on the left but lacks distinction.
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The long par 4 seventh plays across flat land and isn’t one of the course’s better looking hole, but it is an interesting one. A creek runs up the right side of the fairway and there’s a perfectly placed bunker about 250 out in the left center of the fairway. You want to challenge this bunker (there’s room to its left) because the creek on the right turns into a pond at the front right of the green and it’s easier to avoid it from the left side. This shaping on this hole is noticeably more minimalist than on the previous holes and looking at the website, there’s a good explanation for this: it’s one of the remaining Fowler holes.

The par 5 eighth, which if you’re playing the right-hand tees uses the aforementioned creek as a diagonal driving hazard up its right side, is another one of the best driving holes. This is likely the most difficult driving hole on the course because in addition to the creek, there are also three bunkers left of the fairway from 225-275 from the tips. Cutting the creek is obviously helpful because it shortens the approach but otherwise, there isn’t much of a reason to be on one side of the fairway or the other. The benched green seems like classic Colt but it was actually designed by Alison in the early 50s (maybe it’s also classic Alison. I don’t know, I haven’t played enough of this courses).

The par 3 ninth looks like and is Colt although apparently also with some input by MacKenzie. Like the fifth, the green is perched and very well defended, this time by six bunkers mostly at its front left and right. The green is also very undulating, with a lower front right portion and a higher back left.

While Colt got rid of most of the blind shots in his reworking of the course, the drive on ten is completely blind. But uncertainty aside, it isn’t a difficult driving hole because the fairway is wide and flat, with only one small fairway bunker on the right almost 300 yards from the tips. While I like blind shots to have forgiving landing areas, this drive perhaps crosses the line between ‘forgiving’ and ‘uninteresting.’ The approach to the green is no more distinguished.

The long par 4 eleventh may be the flattest hole on the course but was one of my favorites because of its well-placed left hand fairway bunker that guards the best angle to the well-bunkered, narrow-but-deep, and minimalist green. Not surprisingly, this is another Fowler hole.

The hole reminds me of Walton Heath. Despite flat land and hardly any shaping on or around the green, Fowler was able to use a few simple elements (in this case bunkers) to craft and simple, but interesting and challenging hole. We could also compare Burnham to the Old Course at Sunningdale as a course with more heavily shaped Colt hole and simpler Park Jr. (in this case Fowler) holes. I don’t think the balance here is as good as the Old because there isn’t as much of the simpler style of design and most of the original quirk in that design has been removed. The Colt holes also aren’t as distinctive.

The twelfth was a medium-long par 4 when I played it with a drive through a narrow opening in the dunes but the course website now lists it as a 200 yard par 3. I liked the version of the hole that I played because the drive was challenging yet bunkerless. Apparently the club has kept the green, which Hawtree did a nice job setting in the dunes just right of an old church. And the website notes that the original Hawtree hole was a par 3 so it looks like the current change is a move to restore that.

Thirteen is an interesting long par 5 (~570) which plays gently uphill and where the fairway starts wide but gets narrower the closer that you get to the green. The hole really starts to narrow about 150 out from the green and it’s one of the more demanding par 5 layup shots that I’ve seen. Again, the green is narrow and deep.

Another criticism that I have of Burnham is that while each of the par 3s is a good hole in its own right, they’re too similar to each other, with all of their greens perched on ledges and deeper than wide. I would have liked one green in a hollow or on a flat with minimal shaping, like on the Fowler holes. The fourteenth was a bit different from the other three when I played in that its green was bunkerless but with the conversion of twelve back to a par 3, that is not unique either.

I thought that the very long (~480) par 4 fifteenth was, with the third, one of the two best holes on the course. From the 450 yard tees that I played (I think), the fairway turns left at a mound about 250 yards out. If you leave it short of the mound, you’ll have a blind approach. But the further left you go, the more awkward the approach becomes because the green is narrow, deep, and has a big dune at its front left. It’s important to keep your ball as far right in the fairway as you can because it’s much easier to run the ball onto the green from the right side.

The green is easily the course’s best, lying simply on the ground with many interesting little ridges and bumps. I was a bit surprised to learn that the green was an 1897 original because there seems to be a lot of shaping on and around it. But the shaping is small scale, so it could have been done then. Or perhaps more likely, it could have evolved to what it is now.

Sixteen, which competes with the sixth for the title of Burnham’s least distinctive hole, is a short par 4 with a wide fairway and a two-tiered green at the base of the dunes. Seventeen is another par 3 where the green is elevated and difficult to hit.

The excellent long par 4 eighteenth hole is mostly Fowler with visual simplification of the approach by Alison. While you can see a lot of the fairway from the tee, it’s unclear what it does over the ridge. The fairway turns left and from the 450 yard back tees, it’s about 260 to go into the dune ridge through the fairway over the left edge of the visible fairway. Long hitters will either need to aim left or hit a draw. The approach is open and the green lays simply on the land, with the first tee immediately at its back for those who want to go around again.

I wasn’t aware of Burnham’s impressive architectural pedigree when I was playing the course. I remembered reading somewhere that the course used to be full of blind shots and that it had been ‘simplified’ over the years, but I didn’t realize that the simplifications had been carried out by no less than Colt and Alison. The current course is very strong and with a few back tees, would I think be an excellent venue for top-flight tournaments. It might be logistically difficult to host the Open Championship here because the entrance to the course is one narrow road in a densely populated suburb—but the 9-hole Channel Course would provide sufficient room for the ubiquitous corporate hospitality tents.

I came to Burnham and Berrow after having played Cleeve Hill, Pennard, and Painswick and I was missing some of their oddness here. For a course that was originally full of blind shots, there are hardly any now. It’s all pretty smoothed-out and regularized—one of the least quirky links courses that I played during my time in the UK. And while Colt’s work is always well thought-out and interesting, he had one of the heavier sets of hands of the early architects. As I’ve noted about some of his other courses, especially Sunningdale New, his work, with its shelved greens, mounding, and bunker patterns, can look quite modern. It lacks the simplicity and randomness of some of his contemporaries, like Braid and Fowler.

And I think that on this wild piece of links land, it would have been better to let the land dictate the features of the holes. There would have probably been a few weird/bad ones, but I suspect that there would have been a bit more originality in it. That’s not to say that the current course isn’t excellent—it is and I suspect that the majority would prefer the current course to what I’m envisioning. But I’d love to see the layout of the previous Fowler version of the course and wouldn’t be surprised if I would have preferred it to the current one.

Of the 12 courses that I planned to see during my 2016 summer tour of southwestern England and Wales, Pennard was, with the also-James-Braid-designed St. Enodoc, at the top of the list. Like many of the courses that I wanted to see in the UK, this was thanks to Tom Doak’s description of it as a wild and rustic place, with horses running across the fairway. Now in the two previous days I had seen Cleeve Hill and Southerndown, so this course was unlikely to impress me with rusticity. But I love quirky courses, especially quirky links courses (a bit redundant…), so I was really looking forward to it.

Like the Addington, I think that the quirkiness of Pennard has been overstated by a bit. I’m sure that things were  different 30 years ago--I'm sure that the maintenance practices have become more refined--but I found the course to be a very strong test of golf and not really all that quirky. There are a few severe holes, especially the seventeenth, but the course isn’t really competitive in quirkiness compared to say Painswick or Perranporth. It’s none the worse for that though—while Pennard is maybe a bit lacking as far as world class holes (I’d only nominate the seventh), it’s consistently solid and interesting, requiring good control of your ball to keep it in some of the steeply pitched fairways.

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The par 4 first features a drive that narrows somewhat the further you go and slopes gently off to the right. I hit a fade and found it to be a bit of a tough opening tee shot, but it really isn’t too bad. The main difficulty here is that unless you can drive it about 330 yards, you’ll have a blind shot to the green. This shouldn’t be too much of a problem though because the green is wide open in front. The green is in a classic links setting and runs gently away to the back.

The short par 3 second was undergoing some renovations during our visit. Speaking of Tom Doak, he was extending the small green up the dune behind it to create a deep, two-tiered green. The current version was nice and I especially liked the mound at the front-right, but the two-tiered version will certainly be more challenging and interesting.

There’s a lot of great links land behind and to the right of the second hole and I didn’t really understand why there needed to be a 120 yard walk to the third tee. Unless there was some environmental reason why they couldn’t use it, they could have routed the par 3 second from the first green right to the third tee.

But once you get to it, the par 4 third is a good one, doglegging left around the dunes. It’s a bit of an awkward driving hole with the fairway sloping right. The hole is only about 380 from the tips, so it’s best to play conservatively here. The green has front and back-right bunkers, making it very tough to go at any right hand pin…like we had on this day.

The drive on the ~550 yard par 5 fourth plays back over the third green and is pretty wide open. The approach is tough because of the bumpy fairway and the lack of aiming points. It’s probably best to play conservatively out to the right but like at the first, unless you hit it far enough, you won’t have a view of the sunken green.

I believe that the fourth green and the par 3 fifth are not Braid originals although neither is worse off for it. The fifth has a particularly interesting green although it’s quite narrow and would be difficult to hit in any kind of wind (we had very un-linkslike weather on this day; low 70s and calm).

I actually felt that the first five holes were ones that you might find on any standard, good links course. The terrain was rolling but not hilly and the was nothing odd about any of the holes. But Pennard starts to show itself with the sixth, an excellent, but difficult 400 yard uphill par 4 that doglegs gently left. It’s an awkward drive between a bunker about 195 on the left and another about 215 on the right with the fairway sloping left-to-right. It’s really helpful to be comfortable hitting a draw here.

But whatever you do off the tee, you’re not going to have a view of the green, which is sunken in a bowl. You will, however be able to see the flag if you drive it in the fairway.

While I thought that the sixth was an excellent hole, it doesn’t compare to the seventh, which must be one of the most stunning holes in the UK. I’m not sure that it’s one of the most strategically interesting holes because although there are bunkers in the center of the fairway, I don’t think that there’s much reason to play to the high left side—the approach will still be blind and the angle more awkward. But you do want to take on the fairway bunkers so that you have a short second…because the green is wild. One of the best greens that I’ve ever seen.

The 360 yard eights plays back up the hill and is characteristic of Pennard—tough driving hole with an elevated, well-defended green (fourteen is almost identical). The green is another dramatic one with a steep tier separating the back right from the rest.

The long par 4 ninth is another reverse camber hole, doglegging left but with the fairway sloping right. The fairway is also somewhat narrow and unless you hit a slight draw, you’ll probably end up in the right rough. The long approach—off a hanging lie to a left-to-right sloping green with trouble at the front left—is very tough.

The par 5 tenth is a bit awkward, with the fairway turning left at about 240 yards and running downhill through a boggy area. It’s easy to drive it through the fairway here but if you can hit a slight draw, you should be able to get your ball down to the flat. Although I didn’t figure it out in my two plays, I suspect that this drive wouldn’t be that hard for most good players because you don’t have to hit it very far before you catch the slope. You should be able to reach the green off a decent drive but again, it’s an uphill approach to a well-defended green.

The 180 yard par 3 eleventh green is built into the side of a hill but is a little deeper than it looks because it runs at a diagonal from front-left to back-right.

The next two holes are pretty similar, but twelve is a 300 yard par 4 and thirteen is a 200 yard par 3. The entire twelfth hole has an awkward left-to-right cant. You can ensure yourself a flatter lie on twelve by playing to the right, but the angle becomes awkward if you go too far right. It’s a very tricky pitch to the elevated green if you’re within 50 yards but out to the right. I didn’t give it a try, but the best play here might just be driver at the green, even if you don’t have the distance to reach. A puzzling hole, but one that I really liked.

Thirteen is a curious long par 3, with a fairway running up to the right and a small ridge dividing it from the shallow punchbowl green. The left side of the green is blind and very tough to hit unless you can carry it all the way on because there’s a dune in front. Playing pin high up the fairway to the right and pitching on isn’t a bad play.

Fourteen is very similar to the eighth, uphill and doglegging left. The second is more intimidating because the green is just over a ridge and the surface is blind from the fairway. I didn’t get a picture, but I remember this as one of the more interesting green surfaces on a course with several of them.

Part of the interest in the green surface on the short par 3 fifteenth is that it’s 40 yards deep and winds back and forth between bunkers and mounds. Again, we were treated to the difficult pin on the small shelf in the back. Any pin on the front half of the green is very gettable.

The par 5 sixteenth is one of the most famous at Pennard, plunging down to the cliffs edge. It’s a really good driving hole, with two bunkers on the high left side of the fairway up to 240 out. Unless you can reach the green in two (only 515 from the tips, so doable for many), you want to play up the left side so that you have a better view of the layup zone. It’s a very awkward layup because the fairway tilts sharply to the left and it’s easy to run through it if you’re playing down the slope from the right side. The green is elevated and the most steeply pitched (back-right to front-left) on the course.

Now we play back uphill for a second consecutive par 5 that most be one of the most divisive holes that I’ve played. Many seem to love it…I think it’s a mess.

Like the eighteenth hole at Southerndown (although this time not visible from the tee), the fairway has two tiers; high left and low right. You want to play at the left side if the fairway (if you can figure out where that is) because the fairway slopes sharply into gorse on the right. Hopefully your ball kicks into the right side of the fairway because the second is much more awkward from the left side; dunes and gorse block the view of much of the layup zone from here. If you’re in the right side, you have a fairly good view of the whole layup area.

While the hole is only about 490 yards, I can’t imagine that many can go for it in two because the fairway narrows considerably past 240 yards with gorse on both sides and the view of the green is blind until about 160 out. Best to play a long iron, then about a 7-8 iron and be happy if you’re playing from the fairway for your third. It probably didn’t help my opinion of the hole that I had an altercation with one of the locals who walked his dog right in front of us as we were trying to play our second shots, but it might have been my grumbling about the hole which caused me to pick that fight (which I lost) in the first place.

The final hole is a long par 4 that’s probably too narrow for a links course, but I liked it anyway. It also plays downwind, so you can use a shorter club and still get within a midiron of the green. I failed again to get a picture of the green, which was another of the course’s best.

Pennard ended up being my favorite course on our trip…although that might be because trying to play St. Enodoc in a 25 mph. sustained wind was a nightmare. Contrary to my expectations, it’s a championship calibre course—although probably a bit too short for a top level men’s competition today. Also much to my surprise, it was one of the best conditioned courses that I played in southwest England/Wales. The fairways were good and the greens were fast. No horses, but there was a herd of cattle between the sixth and seventh holes. But unlike many of the other courses that I played on this trip, the livestock hadn’t left much of a mark on the course.

But I also have to say that when I go back over Pennard hole-by-hole, I’m not sure that it’s quite as strong as I thought when I was there. It’s a James Braid course and while I count several of his courses among my favorites, each has its flaws. Usually this is because they’re on property that’s uninteresting (didn't play one of those), awkward (St. Enodoc), or just over-the-top (Perranporth). But the land at Pennard is outstanding—there’s more than enough room for eighteen holes here although parts of it are quite steep. There are spots here, especially at the beginning of the round, where I think that the course could get more out of the land. And there’s plenty enough land that the abomination that is the seventeenth hole could have been avoided.

But so what? Maybe Pennard doesn’t belong on a list of world top 100 courses. It’s still an excellent course and right at the top of the list of courses that you must play if you get to west England/south Wales. Some might find the comparison abhorrent, but it reminds me a bit of the first course at Arcadia Bluffs in Michigan—both dunesy and hilly, sloping toward the cliffs edge with a few awkward/over-the-top holes but many solid ones. Pennard’s certainly a better walk than Arcadia Bluffs (which was designed for golf carts), but it also doesn’t have as many outstanding holes. But overall it’s a much better place for the game, requiring none of the environmental destruction of some of our modern courses and having none of the expensive maintenance practices. I wish that we had courses like Pennard in the US.